On the Fringe of the Great Fight

by George Gallie Nasmith

MAJOR-GENERAL M.S. MERCER, C.B.
Former Officer Commanding Third Canadian Division.
Killed in action, June, 1916.[ToList]

After some delay at the Havre docks for petrol, we got away and reported our arrival at one of the rest camps on the outskirts of the city. Our elation at having finally arrived in France was marred only by the news that we would probably be detained at the base for two or three days. Having been informed that the Hotel Tortoni was the liveliest place in town to stay, and not to go there on any account, we went and concluded that we had been the victims of a practical joke, for we had not seen anything so dull in all our lives; it was as dull and as good as a hotel at Chautauqua. There was more "life" to be seen in an English hotel in a minute than one could see in the Hotel Tortoni in a month.

As there were no theatres or concerts to go to and nothing else to do, we went to bed in the chilliest bedrooms that I had ever been in up to that time. I soon learned that French hotel bedrooms in winter have the same cold, clammy feeling as the interior of refrigerator cars in summer. This accounts, perhaps, for the French being a hot-blooded people.

Of all the cities of the world that it has been my privilege to visit, the city of Havre is the dirtiest, the ugliest, and the least interesting. We could find no public buildings with even the slightest pretence to beauty, and the rest of the city was as dull and commercial as it is possible for a seaport town to be; one can say little more than that, in consideration of any city. With the exception of the docks and the casino there is nothing of interest, and even the casino, like all the casinos in France, had been converted into a hospital.

After two days of killing time, our orders came through to leave for the front, two of us to go by motor and the rest by train. Our experience with the British officer at the base had certainly been pleasant and proved to be a happy augury of our future relationships with them. The British officer in France is quite a different man from the same officer in England, and does not impress you with the fact that the war is being carried on by his individual efforts.

At the base we learned for the first time that we had been a great source of anxiety to some of the officials of the British army three weeks before, when the war office had announced our departure from England. When we had failed to report our arrival at Havre the authorities had assumed that we, being Canadians and more or less independent, had gone off on a little trip of our own into the interior of France. In their efforts to locate us they had telegraphed far and wide; consequently when we did arrive everybody knew of us as "The Lost Canadian Laboratory" and seemed to be quite pleased that we had been found. When anything goes astray in the army it causes a tremendous amount of consternation and trouble until it is located; the easiest thing to lose is a soldier in hospital but as he can talk this matter usually rights itself sooner or later.

The morning on which we set out on our first day's "march" to the front was misty and raw, and motoring was very cold. Even this early in the season—mid March, 1915—the fields were being ploughed, but the ploughing and harrowing was being done by women, old men and boys. Hardly one able-bodied man was to be seen, the contrast with England in this respect at that time being very marked. A crowd of schoolboys pleading for souvenirs were made to earn them and amuse us by running races while we had a tire replaced.

The banks on the roadside were yellow with the first primroses, and patches of golden daffodils could be seen in the woods, though spring seemed to be far enough away that chilly day. It was characteristic of one's experience in France that, as we sat down to dinner that evening in an Abbeville hotel I had beside me an officer in the British army who had been in Canada for a number of years and who had, during that time, been a frequent caller at my home in Toronto. The spontaneous manner in which the two of us rose and rushed at each other with outstretched arms would have done credit to native born Frenchmen.

As we approached the front, the long straight French roads gave way to winding narrow ways, frequently paved with cobble stones called pavé. The country became flat, and the roadside ditches were filled to the brim with water. That we were within the sphere of military operations became more and more evident. Motor cars carrying officers passed frequently; motor transports carrying food and fodder rumbled along the roads or were parked in the outskirts of villages or in village squares; motor ambulance convoys were drawn up in front of hospitals, and, in general, we felt that we were nearing the real seat of operations, the front line.

It was a drive of a hundred miles to the little town which was to be our headquarters for nine long months, and I remember the thrill that I had when we first saw the effects of shell fire—a hole about two feet in diameter in the bricks above the door of the Hotel de Ville. As we later discovered, the village authorities had decided not to repair that hole but to leave it as a memorial of the day when the Germans had been driven from the town and had fired some shells back into it, killing a dozen of the inhabitants.