Two days afterwards, accompanied to the station by an admiring crowd and three ladies carrying Italian flags, we bade farewell to Florence and started on our return journey. We spent the afternoon in Pisa, and, after a night's journey, arrived at Turin in the morning. Our men got out of the train and were making their way to the station when they were met by the British R.T.O. a very large officer who wore an eyeglass. He brought them quickly to attention by calling out, "Who are you?" They told him they were Canadians on leave, and I, fearing bloodshed, went up to the officer and explained who they were and why they had come. He told me that there had been a mutiny in Turin that summer and relations between the British and Italians were very much strained, owing to the action of German agents. He said he had been living on the top of a volcano for the past three months, and was afraid to allow any large body of troops to go about the town lest there might be trouble. I assured him that our men would behave with great circumspection. He then told me that they would have to be back in rest-billets, near the station, not later than ten o'clock. I asked if he could not make it eleven, because I knew that the men wanted to go to the theatre. He agreed to this and asked me to tell them that roll would be called in the rest-billets at eleven o'clock. I halted the men and said, "Boys, roll will be called in the rest-billets tonight at eleven o'clock sharp." Whether it was or not we never knew, for none of us was there to hear. The men went to the theatres and to the various hotels afterwards. No trouble ensued, and when we left on the following afternoon the R.T.O. was most friendly and gave us a hearty send-off, no doubt feeling too relieved at our departure to make any inquiries.
Although we had had a most delightful trip I was really thankful we were at last setting our faces towards the North. We arrived in Paris the next morning, and before we left the station I told the men that every one of them had to be at the train that evening. I had taken it upon myself to extend their leave, as I thought their presence in Italy was beneficial to the cause, but I asked them to show their gratitude by not failing to return all together. That night, to my intense satisfaction, they all turned up at the station at seven o'clock, and we started for Calais. We arrived there the next morning, and in the afternoon left for the front.
We arrived at Poperinghe that night at six o'clock. It was dark, a drizzling rain was falling, and the mud was thick. We could hear the big guns firing, and the men were coming and going in all directions. We took a hasty farewell of one another and then parted. No one we met cared whether we had come from Italy or were going to Jericho. The men did not know where their headquarters were, and I was particularly anxious not to find mine. I went over to the Officer's Club and secured a shake-down in the garret, but, as I heard that our Division had made an attack that day, I determined to go up to the line. I started off after dinner in an ambulance to the old mill at Vlamertinghe, where there was a repetition of the sights and sounds which I had experienced there on two previous occasions. Later on, I went forward in another ambulance through Ypres to an advanced dressing station. Then I started to walk up the terrible, muddy roads till I came to the different German pill-boxes which had been converted into headquarters for the battalions. Finally, after wading through water and mud nearly up to my knees, I found myself the next afternoon wandering through the mud and by the shell holes and miserable trenches near Goudberg Copse, with a clear view of the ruins of Paschendaele, which was held by another division on our right. The whole region was unspeakably horrible. Rain was falling, the dreary waste of shell-ploughed mud, yellow and clinging, stretched off into the distance as far as the eye could see. Bearer parties, tired and pale, were carrying out the wounded on stretchers, making a journey of several miles in doing so. The bodies of dead men lay here and there where they had fallen in the advance. I came across one poor boy who had been killed that morning. His body was covered with a shiny coating of yellow mud, and looked like a statue made of bronze. He had a beautiful face, with finely shaped head covered with close curling hair, and looked more like some work of art than a human being. The huge shell holes were half full of water often reddened with human blood and many of the wounded had rolled down into the pools and been drowned. As I went on, some one I met told me that there was a wounded man in the trenches ahead of me. I made my way in the direction indicated and shouted out asking if anybody was there. Suddenly I heard a faint voice replying, and I hurried to the place from which the sound came. There I found sitting up in the mud of the trench, his legs almost covered with water, a lad who told me that he had been there for many hours. I never saw anything like the wonderful expression on his face. He was smiling most cheerfully, and made no complaint about what he had suffered. I told him I would get a stretcher, so I went to some trenches not far away and got a bearer party and a stretcher and went over to rescue him. The men jumped down into the trench and moved him very gently, but his legs were so numb that although they were hit he felt no pain. One of the men asked him if he was only hit in the legs. He said, "Yes," but the man looked up at me and pulling up the boy's tunic showed me a hideous wound in his back. They carried him off happy and cheerful. Whether he ever recovered or not I do not know. If he did and ever sees this book, I wish he would write and tell me how he is.
That was our last attack at Paschendaele. Our Division had taken its final objective. The next morning, the infantry were to come out of the line, so in the late afternoon I returned with some stretcher bearers. Several times shells came near enough to splatter us with mud, and here and there I turned aside to bury those for whom graves had just been prepared.
At the front that day, a runner and I had joined in a brief burial service over the body of a gallant young officer lying where he fell on the side of a large shell-hole. As I uttered the words—"I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord," it seemed to me that the lonely wind bore them over that region of gloom and death as if it longed to carry the message of hope far away to the many sad hearts in Canada whose loved ones will lie, until the end, in unknown graves at Paschendaele.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Our Last War Christmas.
Our Division moved back to Barlin and I was once more established in my old billet. As our artillery were still at Ypres, I determined to go back on the following day to the Salient. I started in a car the next morning at six, and arrived at Talbot House, Poperinghe, in time to have breakfast with Padré Clayton, who was in charge of that splendid institution. Then I made my way to Ypres and found my son at his battery headquarters under the Cloth Hall Tower. It was a most romantic billet, for the debris of the ruins made a splendid protection from shells, and the stone-vaulted chambers were airy and commodious, much better than the underground cellars in which most of the men were quartered. The guns of the battery were forward in a very "unhealthy" neighbourhood. The officers and men used to take turns in going on duty there for twenty-four hours at a time. They found that quite long enough, as the forward area was continually exposed to shells and aeroplane attacks. I went on to visit our own field batteries, and found them distributed in a most desolate region. The mud was so deep that to step off the bath-mats meant sinking almost to the knees. In order to move the guns, planks had to be laid in front of them for a track, and the guns were roped and dragged along by the men. It was hard physical labour but they bore it, as they did other difficulties and dangers, with the utmost good humour. It was tiring enough merely to walk out to see them, without having anything else to do. What those men went through at that time no one can imagine. Just to watch them laying the planks and hauling on the ropes which drew the heavy mud-covered guns made me weary. When I meet some of my gunner friends in Montreal and Toronto looking so clean and happy, I think of what they did behind Passchendaele Ridge, and I take off my hat to them.
I spent three days at Ypres, and then, by jumping lorries, made my way back to St. Venant and Robecq, where I spent the night. The next morning I left for Bethune, and thence by the assistance of lorries and a car continued my journey to our new Divisional Headquarters, which had found a home at Château de la Haie. Here I had a billet in an upstairs room over what had been part of a stable. The room was neither beautiful nor clean, but served as an abode for me and Alberta and her newly-arrived family. The Château was a large house of no distinction, but it stood in delightful grounds, and at the back of it was a pond whose clear waters reflected the tall, leafless trees which bordered it. One fact made the Château popular and that was, that, up to that time, no shell or bomb had fallen in the neighbourhood. It was said that the location of the Château was not to be found on the enemy's maps. Round about were huts with accommodation sufficient to house a whole brigade. The charm of the place was completed by our 4th Division having erected there a large and most artistic theatre, which would seat on benches nearly one thousand men. It had a good stage and a pit for the orchestra in front. This theatre, when our concert party was in full swing, was a source of infinite delight to us all. It was built on the slope of a hill, the stage being at the lower end and a good view of the play therefore, could be had from all parts. The scenery was beautifully painted and the electric lights and foot-lights well arranged.
Near us was the village of Gouy-Servins, where many men were billeted, and in huts at Souchez and other places along the valley the various units found their homes. The year's campaign was now over and we could look forward to a quiet time during the winter. "C" mess had a very comfortable hut, with an open fireplace. We were supposed to have the liveliest entertainments of any mess at Headquarters, and had therefore many visitors. I shall never forget the jolly face of our president, the D.A.D.M.S., nor the irrepressible spirit of our A.P.M., son of a distinguished father who commanded an Army, nor the dry common-sense humour of our Field Cashier. What delight they took in ragging the Senior Chaplain, whose automatic ears, as he averred, prevented his hearing the things he should not. Nor must we forget the Camp Commandant, often perplexed like Martha with much serving. It was a goodly company and one much addicted to bridge and other diversions. I shall not forget the continual appeals of a gallant staff officer with two or three ribbons, who asked me penitently every morning for a moral uplift, which I noticed completely evaporated before evening. There was a freedom about our gatherings that was quite unique and has left pleasant memories in the mind, in spite of the fact that I told my fellow members they were the most godless crowd in Christendom. One day when we were at Ecoivres, a shell fell by the house, while we were having dinner. Someone asked me afterwards if it had "put my wind up?" "Not a bit", I replied, "I knew that the Devil was not going to destroy one of his favourite machine-gun emplacements."