The Great War As I Saw It

by Frederick George Scott

After their rest and refreshment, the company went over to a sunken road on the east side of the village. It was now getting very chilly and the daylight was dying rapidly. From the ground above the road one could see in the distance the spires of Cambrai, and in some fields to the southeast of us, with my glasses I could distinctly see numbers of little grey figures going into trenches, apparently with the idea of getting round to the south of our village on our exposed flank. I met a young officer of the machine-gun battalion, and lending him my glasses pointed out where the Germans were massing. He got the men of his section and took up a forward position along a ditch which ran at right angles to the sunken road. Here too were some of the companies of the 5th Battalion. They had hardly got into position when the Germans shelled the road we had been on, most unmercifully. I took refuge with a number of the men of the 5th Battalion in a garden, beside a brick building which had been used by the German troops as a wash-house and which was particularly malodorous. Two or three shells dropped in the orchard, breaking the trees, and we had to keep down on the ground while the shelling lasted. I could not help thinking of the warning the 2nd Battalion officer had given us about the situation on our right. It did seem pretty bad, because, until the arrival of the 7th and 8th Battalions, our right flank was exposed, and the enemy might have gone round to the southeast of the village and attacked us in the rear. When things settled down, I went back up the sunken road, and, as I did so, thought I saw some men going into a gateway in the main street of the village. I made my way to the open trenches where the Colonel of the 5th Battalion had his headquarters, and I determined to spend the night there, so they kindly provided me with a German overcoat. I was just settling down to sleep when a runner came up and reported that some men were wounded and were asking the way to the dressing station. Someone said they thought the M.O. had made his headquarters in the village. Then I remembered having seen some men enter a gateway in the street as I passed, so two of us started off to find out if this was the regimental aid post. The night was absolutely black, and my companion and I had to feel our way along the street not knowing who or what we might bump into, and expecting every moment that the Germans would begin to shell the place as soon as they thought we had had time to find billets there. At last to our great relief, we came to a large gateway in a brick wall and found some of our men, who told us that the M.O. had made his dressing station in the cellar of a building to the right. We went down into it and came upon a place well lighted with candles, where the devoted M.O. and his staff were looking after a number of men on stretchers.

The Germans were determined that we should not have a quiet night and very soon, as we had expected, they began to shell the village. The dressing station was in a building which they themselves had used for the same purpose, so they knew its location, and shells began to fall in the yard. We got all the men we could down to the cellar; but still there were some stretcher cases which had to be left in the rooms upstairs. It was hard to convince them that there was no danger. However the "straffing" stopped in time, and I went down to the end of the cellar and slept in a big cane-seated chair which the Germans had left behind them. In the morning I went back again to our men in the line. The 10th Battalion had established themselves partly in a ditch along the Cambrai road not far from Epinoy, and partly in outposts behind the German wire. The country was undulating, and in places afforded an extensive view of the forward area. German machine-gun emplacements were in all directions, and our men suffered very severely. I was in an outpost with one of the companies when I saw in the distance one of our men crawling on his hands and knees up to a German machine-gun emplacement. The helmets of the enemy could be distinctly seen above the parapet. It was very exciting watching the plucky fellow approach the place of danger with the intention of bombing it. Unfortunately just as he had reached the side of the trench the Germans must have become aware of his presence, for they opened fire, and he had to crawl back again as fast as he could.

Though many wounded were brought in, we knew that some were still lying out on the other side of the wire in full view of the enemy. As soon as it was dark enough, a bearer party, which I accompanied, started off to try and collect these men. With my cane I managed to lead the party through a gap in the wire. I came to a poor fellow who had been lying there since the previous night with a smashed arm and leg. He was in great pain, but the men got him in safely, and the next time I saw him was in a Toronto hospital where he was walking about with a wooden leg, and his arm in a sling. I went down to an outpost where I saw some men. We could only talk in whispers, as we knew the Germans were close at hand. They told me they were one of the companies of the 10th Battalion. I asked, "Where are your officers?" They said, "They are all gone." "Who is in command?" They replied, "A Lance-Corporal." I rejoined the bearers and we had great difficulty in getting back, as we could not find the gap in the wire, which seemed to go in all directions.

The 10th Battalion was relieved that night by the 8th, the C.O. of which made his headquarters with the C.O. of the 5th Battalion in a large dugout by the sunken road. There, late at night, I shared a bunk with a young machine-gun officer and had a few hours of somewhat disturbed sleep. The next morning, Sunday, September the 29th, the fourth anniversary of our sailing from Quebec, our men were having a hard time. The German defence at Cambrai was most determined, and they had a large quantity of artillery in the neighbourhood. I went back to the road and into the trench beyond the wire and found a lot of men there. The parapet was so low that the men had dug what they called, "Funk holes" in the clay, where they put as much of their bodies as they could. Sitting in a bend of the trench where I got a good view of the men, I had a service for them, and, as it was that festival, I read out the epistle for St. Michael and All Angel's Day, and spoke of the guardianship of men which God had committed to the Heavenly Hosts. Going down the trench later on, I came to a place from which I could see, with my glasses, a German machine-gun emplacement and its crew. I went back and asked for a sniper. A man who said he was one came up to me and I showed him the enemy and then directed his fire. I could see from little puffs of dust where his bullets were landing. He was a good shot and I think must have done some damage, for all of a sudden the machine-gun opened fire on us and we had to dive into the trench pretty quickly. I told him that I thought we had better give up the game as they had the advantage over us. To snipe at the enemy seemed to be a curious way to spend a Sunday afternoon, but it was a temptation too hard to resist. I crawled back through the trench to the road, and there finding a man who had just lost his hand, directed him to the aid post near Battalion Headquarters. I accompanied him part of the way and had reached the edge of the sunken road, when a major of the Engineers came up to me and said, "I have got a better pair of German glasses than you have." It was an interesting challenge, so we stood there on a little rise looking at the spires of Cambrai and comparing the strength of the lenses. Very distinctly we saw the town, looking peaceful and attractive. Suddenly there was a tremendous crash in front of us, a lot of earth was blown into our faces, and we both fell down. My eyes were full of dirt but I managed to get up again. I had been wounded in both legs, and from one I saw blood streaming down through my puttees. My right foot had been hit and the artery in the calf of my leg was cut. I fell down again with a feeling of exasperation that I had been knocked out of the war. The poor major was lying on the ground with one leg smashed. The same shell had wounded in the chest the young machine-gun officer who had shared his bunk with me the night before. I believe an Imperial officer also was hit in the abdomen and that he died. The chaplain of the 10th Battalion who happened to be standing in the sunken road, got some men together quickly and came to our help. I found myself being carried off in a German sheet by four prisoners. They had forgotten to give me my glasses, and were very much amused when I called for them, but I got them and have them now. The major not only lost his leg but lost his glasses as well. The enemy had evidently been watching us from some observation post in Cambrai, for they followed us up with another shell on the other side of the road, which caused the bearers to drop me quickly. The chaplain walked beside me till we came to the aid post where there were some stretchers. I was placed on one and carried into the dressing station at Haynecourt. They had been having a hard time that day, for the village was heavily shelled. One of their men had been killed and several wounded. I felt a great pain in my heart which made it hard to breathe, so when I was brought into the dressing station I said, "Boys, I am going to call for my first and last tot of rum." I was immensely teased about this later on by my friends, who knew I was a teetotaller. They said I had drunk up all the men's rum issue. A General wrote to me later on to say he had been terribly shocked to hear I was wounded, but that it was nothing in comparison with the shock he felt when he heard that I had taken to drinking rum. Everyone in the dressing station was as usual most kind. The bitter thought to me was that I was going to be separated from the old 1st Division. The nightmare that had haunted me for so long had at last come true, and I was going to leave the men before the war was over. For four years they had been my beloved companions and my constant care. I had been led by the example of their noble courage and their unhesitating performance of the most arduous duties, in the face of danger and death, to a grander conception of manhood, and a longing to follow them, if God would give me grace to do so, in their path of utter self-sacrifice. I had been with them continuously in their joys and sorrows, and it did not seem to be possible that I could now go and desert them in that bitter fight. When the doctors had finished binding up my wounds, I was carried off immediately to an ambulance in the road, and placed in it with four others, one of whom was dying. It was a long journey of four hours and a half to No. 1 C.C.S. at Agnez-les-Duisans, and we had to stop at Quéant on the way. Our journey lay through the area over which we had just made the great advance. Strange thoughts and memories ran through my mind. Faces of men that had gone and incidents that I had forgotten came back to me with great vividness. Should I ever again see the splendid battalions and the glad and eager lives pressing on continuously to Victory? Partly from shell holes, and partly from the wear of heavy traffic, the road was very bumpy. The man above me was in terrible agony, and every fresh jolt made him groan. The light of the autumn afternoon was wearing away rapidly. Through the open door at the end of the ambulance, as we sped onward, I could see the brown colourless stretch of country fade in the twilight, and then vanish into complete darkness, and I knew that the great adventure of my life among the most glorious men that the world has ever produced was over.

CHAPTER XXXV.

Victory.
November 11th, 1918.

They took me to the X-ray room and then to the operating-tent that night, and sent me off on the following afternoon to the Base with a parting injunction that I should be well advised to have my foot taken off; which, thank God, was not found necessary. From the C.C.S. at Camiers, two days later I was sent to London to the Endsleigh Palace Hospital near Euston Station, where I arrived with another wounded officer at 2.30 a.m. I was put in a little room on the seventh storey, and there through long nights I thought of our men still at the front and wondered how the war was going. The horror of great darkness fell upon me. The hideous sights and sounds of war, the heart-rending sorrows, the burden of agony, the pale dead faces and blood-stained bodies lying on muddy wastes, all these came before me as I lay awake counting the slow hours and listening to the hoarse tooting of lorries rattling through the dark streets below. That concourse of ghosts from the sub-conscious mind was too hideous to contemplate and yet one could not escape them. The days went by and intimations at last reached us that the German power was crumbling. Swiftly and surely the Divine Judge was wreaking vengeance upon the nation that, by its over-weaning ambition, had drenched the world in blood.

On November 11th at eleven in the morning the bells of London rang out their joyous peals, for the armistice had been signed and the war was over. There was wild rejoicing in the city and the crowds went crazy with delight. But it seemed to me that behind the ringing of those peals of joy there was the tolling of spectral bells for those who would return no more. The monstrous futility of war as a test of national greatness, the wound in the world's heart, the empty homes, those were the thoughts which in me overmastered all feelings of rejoicing.

On Sunday morning, the 4th of May, 1919, on the Empress of Britain, after an absence of four years and seven months, I returned to Quebec. On board were the 16th Battalion with whom I had sailed away in 1914, the 8th Battalion, the Machine Gun Battalion, the 3rd Field Ambulance and some of the Engineers. Like those awaking from a dream, we saw once more the old rock city standing out in the great river. There was the landing and the greeting of loving friends on the wharf within a stone's throw from the place whence we had sailed away. While I was shaking hands with my friends, an officer told me I had to inspect the Guard of Honour which the kind O.C. of the vessel had furnished. I did not know how to do this properly but I walked through the rows of stalwart, bronzed men and looked into their faces which were fixed and immovable. Each man was an original, and every unit in the old 1st Division was represented. For four years and seven months, they had been away from home, fighting for liberty and civilization. Many of them wore decorations; many had been wounded. No General returning victor from a war could have had a finer Guard of Honour.

The troops had to wait on board the ship till the train was ready. All along the decks of the great vessel, crowded against the railings in long lines of khaki, were two thousand seven hundred men. Their bright faces were ruddy in the keen morning air. On their young shoulders the burden of Empire had rested. By their willing sacrifice Canada had been saved. It made a great lump come in my throat to look at them and think of what they had gone through.