The P.P.s shot at Germans. After a night without sleep, after a day among their dead and wounded, after torrents of shell-fire, after breathing smoke, dust and gas, these veterans were in a state of exaltation entirely oblivious of danger, of their surroundings, mindless of what came next, automatically shooting to kill as they were trained to do, even as a man pulls with all his might in the crucial test of a tug of war. Old Corporal Christy, bear-hunter of the North-West, who could "shoot the eye off an ant," as Niven said, leaned out over the parapet, or what was left of it, because he could take better aim lying down and the Germans were so thick that he could not afford any misses.
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 which destroyed the gun finally crushed his leg and arm. He crawled out of the debris toward 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, there, in sight of the field scattered with German dead, the P.P.s counted their numbers. Of the six hundred and thirty-five men who had begun the fight at daybreak, one hundred and fifty men and four officers, Niven, Pappineau, Clark and Vandenberg, remained fit for duty.
Vandenberg is a Hollander, 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 Zacetecas 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. Corporal Christy, the bear-hunter, had his "luck with him." He had not even a scratch.
Such is the story of a hard fight by one battalion in the kind of warfare waged in Europe these days, a story only partially told; a story to make a book. All the praise that the P.P.s, millionaire or labourer, scapegrace or respectable pillar of society, ask is that they are 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 many times in a small section of that long line from Switzerland to the North Sea.
Leaning against the wall in a corner of the dining-room of the French château were the P.P.s colours. Major Niven took off the wrapper in order that I might see the flag with the initials of the battalion which Princess Patricia embroidered with her own hands. There is room, one repeats, for a little sentiment and a little emotion, too, between Halifax and Vancouver.
"Of course we could not take our colours into action," said Niven. "They would have been torn into tatters or buried in a shell-crater. But we've always kept them up at battalion headquarters. I believe we are the only battalion that has. We promised the Princess that we would."
In her honour, an old custom has been renewed in France: knights are fighting in the name of a fair lady.
XXV
Many Pictures