He had been worrying about his supply of rifle cartridges. There were not enough to take care of another German infantry charge which was surely coming. After repelling two charges, think of failing to repel the third for want of ammunition! Think of Corporal Christy, the bear-hunter, with the Germans thick in front of him and no bullets for his rifle! But appeared again Mr. Thomas Atkins—another platoon of him with twenty boxes of cartridges which were rather a risky burden to bring through the shell fire. The relief as these were distributed was that of having something at your throat which threatens to strangle you removed.
Making another tour of his trenches about four in the afternoon, Niven found that there was a gap of fifty yards between his left and the right of the adjoining regiment. Fifty yards is the inch on the end of a man’s nose in trench warfare on such an occasion. He was able to place eight men in that gap. At least, they could keep a lookout and tell him what was going on.
It was not cheering news either to learn a little later that the regiments on his left had withdrawn to trenches about three hundred yards to the rear—a long distance in trench warfare. But the P. P’s had no time for retirement. They could have gone only in the panic of men who think of nothing in their demoralisation except to flee from the danger in front without thinking that there may be more danger to the rear. They were held where they were under what cover they had by the renewed blasts of shells—putting the machine guns out of action again—which suddenly ceased; for the Germans were coming on again.
Now was the supreme effort. It was as a nightmare in which only the objective of effort is recalled and all else is a vague struggle of all the strength one can exert against smothering odds. No use to ask these men what they thought. What do you think when you are climbing up a rope whose strands are breaking over the edge of a precipice? You climb—that is all.
The P. P’s shot at Germans. After a night without sleep, after a day among their dead and wounded, after the torrents of shell-fire, after breathing smoke, dust and gas, these veterans were in a state of exaltation entirely unconscious of dangers of their surroundings, mindless of what came next, automatically shooting to kill as they were trained to do, even as a man pulls with every ounce of strength he has in him in a close finish of a boat race.
Corporal Dover had to give up firing his machine gun at last. Wounded, he had dug it out of the earth after an explosion and set it up again. The explosion that destroyed the gun finally crushed his leg and arm. He crawled out of the débris towards the support trench which had become the fire trench, only to be killed by a bullet.
The Germans got possession of a section of the P. P’s’ trench where, it is believed, no Canadians were left. But the German effort died there. It could get no farther. This was as near to Ypres as the Germans were to go in this direction. When the day’s work was done and there in sight of the field scattered with German dead, the P. P’s counted their numbers. Of the 635 men who had begun the fight at daybreak one hundred and fifty men and four officers, Niven, Papineau, Clark and Vandenberg, remained fit for duty.
Papineau is a young lawyer of Montreal, who had already won the Military Cross for bombing Germans out of a sap at St. Eloi. Vandenberg is a Dutchman—but mostly he is Vandenberg. To him the call of youth is the call to arms. He knows the roads of Europe and the roads of Chihuahua. He was at home fighting with Villa at Zacatecas and at home fighting with the P. P’s in front of Ypres.
Darkness found all the survivors among the P. P’s in the support and communication trenches. The fire trench had become an untenable dust-heap. They crept out only to bring in any wounded unable to help themselves; and wounded and rescuers were more than once hit in the process. It was too dangerous to attempt to bury the dead, who were in the fire trench. Most of them had already been buried by shells. For them and for the dead in the support trenches interred by their living comrades Niven recited such portions as he could recall of the Church of England service for the dead—recited them with a tight throat. Then the P. P’s, unbeaten, marched out, leaving the position to their relief, a battalion of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps.
Eighteen hundred strong they had come out to France; and after they had repulsed German charges in the midst of shells that mauled their trenches at Hooge on that indescribable day of May 8th, one hundred and fifty were able to bear arms and little Lieutenant Niven, polo player and horseman, who had entered as a private, was in command. Corporal Christy, bear-hunter of the Northwest, who could “shoot the eyes off an ant,” by some miracle had escaped without a scratch. All the praise that the P. P’s, millionaire or labourer, scapegrace or respectable pillar of society, ask is that they were worthy of fighting side by side with Mr. Thomas Atkins, regular. At best one poor little finite mind only observes through a rift in the black smoke and yellow smoke of high explosives and the clouds of dust and military secrecy something of what has happened in a small section of that long line from Switzerland to the North Sea many times; and this is given here.