The Great War As I Saw It

by Frederick George Scott

On the following Sunday, the Germans having evacuated Albert a day and a half before, I once more paid a visit to the old town. I left my side-car on the outskirts of the place and was taken by Mr. Bean, the Australian War Correspondent, into his car. He was going up to take some photographs. The day was intensely hot, and the dust of the now ruined town was literally ankle-deep and so finely powdered that it splattered when one walked as though it had been water. I saw the ruins of the school-house which our ambulances had used, and noticed that the image of the Virgin had been knocked down from the tower of the Cathedral. I passed the house where our Headquarters had been. The building was still standing but the front wall had gone, leaving the interior exposed. I made my way up the Bapaume road to Tara Hill, and there to my great delight I found the little cemetery still intact. Shells had fallen in it and some of the crosses had been broken, but the place had been wonderfully preserved. A battery on one side of it had just ceased firing and was to advance on the following day. While I was putting up some of the crosses that had fallen, Mr. Bean came up in his car and kindly took a photograph of my son's grave. He also took a photograph of the large Australian cross which stands at one corner of the cemetery. Tara Hill had been for six months between the German front and reserve lines, and I never expected that any trace of the cemetery would have been found. I shall probably never see the place again, but it stands out in my memory now as clear and distinct as though once more I stood above the dusty road and saw before me the rows of little crosses, and behind them the waste land battered by war and burnt beneath the hot August sun. Over that very ground my son and I had ridden together, and within a stone's throw from it two years before we had said good-bye to one another for the last time.

Our Division had now come out of the line and were hurrying north. On August 26th Lyons and I started off in the car, and after a tedious and dusty journey, enlivened by several break-downs, arrived in Arras very late at night and found a billet with the Engineers in the Place de la Croix. Once more our men were scattered about the old city and its environs as if we had never left it. Our Battle Headquarters were in the forward area and rear Headquarters in a large house in Rue du Pasteur. It was a picturesque abode. The building itself was modern, but it was erected on what had been an old Augustinian Monastery of the 11th century. Underneath the house there was a large vaulted hall with pillars in it which reminded one of the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. It was below the level of the ground and was lit by narrow windows opening on the street. It was a most interesting place and had been decorated with heraldic designs painted on canvas shields by a British Division that had once made its headquarters there. We used the hall as our mess and from it passages led to several vault-like chambers and to cellars at the back, one of which was my bedroom. A flight of steps led down to stone chambers below these and then down a long sloping passage to a broken wall which barred the entrance into the mysterious caves beneath the city. The exhalations which came up to my bedroom from these subterranean passages were not as fresh or wholesome as one could have wished, but, as it was a choice between foul air and running the chance of being shelled, I naturally chose the former.

We moved into this billet in the evening, and early the following morning I was lying awake, thinking of all the strange places I had lived in during the war, when close by I heard a fearful crash. I waited for a moment, and then, hearing the sound of voices calling for help, I rushed up in my pyjamas and found that a huge shell had struck a house three doors away, crushing it in and killing and wounding some of our Headquarters staff. Though Arras was then continually being shelled, some of the inhabitants remained. Opposite our house was a convent, and in cellars below the ground several nuns lived all through the war. They absolutely refused to leave their home in spite of the fact that the upper part of the building had been ruined by shells. Our nearness to the railway station, which was a favourite target for the German guns, made our home always a precarious one.

One day the Paymaster was going into our Headquarters, when a shell burst in the Square and some fragments landed in our street taking off the fingers of his right hand. I was away at the time, but when I returned in the evening the signallers showed me a lonely forefinger resting on a window sill. They had reverently preserved it, as it was the finger which used to count out five-franc notes to them when they were going on leave.

Our Corps dressing-station was in the big Asylum in Arras. The nuns still occupied part of the building. The Mother Superior was a fine old lady, intensely loyal to France and very kind to all of us. When the Germans occupied Arras in the beginning of the war, the Crown Prince paid an official visit to the Asylum, and, when leaving, congratulated the Mother Superior on her management of the institution. She took his praises with becoming dignity, but when he held out his hand to her she excused herself from taking it and put hers behind her back.

The dressing-station was excellently run and the system carried out was perfect. The wounded were brought in, attended to, and sent off to the C.C.S. with the least possible delay. The dead were buried in the large military cemetery near the Dainville road where rest the bodies of many noble comrades, both British and Canadian. A ward was set apart for wounded Germans and it was looked after by their own doctors and orderlies.

Meanwhile our Division was preparing for the great attack upon the Drocourt-Quéant line. The 2nd Division were in the trenches and had taken Monchy. We were to relieve them and push on to the Canal du Nord and, if possible, beyond it. Movements were now very rapid. All the staff were kept intensely busy. The old days of St. Jans Cappel and Ploegsteert, with their quiet country life, seemed very far away. This was real war, and we were advancing daily. We heard too of the victories of the French and Americans to the South. It was glorious to think that after the bitter experience of the previous March the tables had been turned, and we had got the initiative once more. Our Battle Headquarters, where the General and his staff were, lay beyond Neuville Vitasse. They were in a deep, wide trench, on each side of which were dugouts and little huts well sandbagged. Over the top was spread a quantity of camouflage netting, so that the place was invisible to German aeroplanes. The country round about was cut up by trenches, and in many of these our battalions were stationed. All the villages in the neighbourhood were hopeless ruins. I tried to get a billet in the forward area, as Arras was so far back, but every available place was crowded and it was so difficult to get up rations that nobody was anxious to have me.

CHAPTER XXXII.

The Smashing of the Drocourt-Quéant Line.
September 2nd, 1918.

On Saturday, August 31st, I paid a visit to our Battle Headquarters, and the General asked me to have a Celebration of the Holy Communion there the next morning at eight. I knew that the attack was almost due, so I prepared for it and took my iron rations with me. We had the Communion Service in a tent at the General's Headquarters. There were only three present, but the General was one of them. I had breakfast in a quaint little hut in the side of the trench, and then started off to the forward area. The great stretch of country was burnt dry by the summer heat and the roads were broken up and dusty. I was taken by car to the Headquarters of the 2nd Brigade which were in a trench, and from thence I started on foot to Cherisy. Here the 8th Battalion were quartered, the 5th being in the line. Zero hour, I was told, was early the next morning. The 2nd and 3rd Brigades were to make the attack. The 5th Battalion was to have advanced that day and taken possession of a certain trench which was to be the jumping off line on the following morning. I heard that they had had a hard time. They had driven out the Germans, but had been seriously counter-attacked and had lost a large number of men. I determined therefore to go out and take them some cigarettes and biscuits which the Y.M.C.A. generously provided. I started off in the afternoon to go to the front line, wherever it might be. I went down the road from Cherisy past the chalk-pit, where we had a little cemetery, and then turning into the fields on the left walked in the direction in which I was told the 5th Battalion lay. It was a long, hot journey, and as I had not quite recovered from my attack of influenza I found it very fatiguing. On all sides I saw gruesome traces of the recent fighting. I came across the body of a young artillery officer of the 2nd Division, but, as all his papers had been taken away, I could not discover his name. My way passed through the remains of what had been an enemy camp. There were a number of well-built huts there, containing much German war-material, but they had been damaged by our shells. The Germans had evidently been obliged to get out of the place as quickly as possible. I was just leaving the camp when I met several of our men bringing up a number of prisoners. While we were talking, some shells fell, and we all had to dive into two trenches. The Huns took one; we Canadians took the other. We had no desire, in case a shell landed in our midst to have our bits mingled with those of the Germans. When the "straffing" was over, the others went back, and I continued my way to the front. It must have been about six or seven o'clock when I arrived at the 5th Battalion Headquarters, which were in a deep German dugout. The Colonel was absent at a conference, so the Adjutant was in command. I told him that I had come provided with cigarettes and other comforts for the men, and asked him to give me a runner to take me to the front line. He absolutely refused to do anything of the kind, as he told me he did not know where it was himself. The situation was most obscure. Our men had attacked and had been driven back and then they had attacked again, but he thought they were now in shell holes and would be hard to find. In fact, he was most anxious about the condition of affairs and was hoping the Colonel would soon return. I asked him if he would like me to spend the night there. He said he would, so I determined to settle down and wait for an opportunity of getting up to the men.