On the Fringe of the Great Fight

by George Gallie Nasmith

At the end of a peaceful day we reached our little French home town, glad to have seen our friends in their new area by the famous old city of the Flemish weavers.

Springtime had come in truth; the hedges of Northern France were beginning to bloom white, and the wild flowers were quite thick in the forest of Nieppe near Merville. It was the time in Canada when the spring feeling suddenly got into the blood, when one threw work to the winds and took to the woods in search of the first violets.

On the twenty-second day of April the very essence of spring was in the air; I felt as if I had to go out into the open and watch the birds and bees, loll in the sun, and do nothing. We struggled along until noon with our routine work, and having completed it Captain Rankin and I left for Ypres. A soldier had been transferred to us, and as we did not need him we decided to register a formal protest and see if he could not be kept with his present unit. Our road lay through Dickiebush and we made good time, again reaching Ypres about two o'clock.

It was quite evident to me as I retraversed the streets of Ypres that it had been heavily shelled since I had been there a few days before. Many more houses had been smashed, and unmended shell holes were seen in the roads. As we crossed the Grande Place there was scarcely a soldier visible. The Cloth Hall, which the Captain had not seen before, showed further evidences of shell fire. After viewing the ruins we drove to the little restaurant kept by the pretty milliners, only to find that the place had completely disappeared—literally blown to atoms. Later on we found that a fifteen-inch shell had landed in the building next door and both houses had simultaneously vanished. A well known officer, Captain Trumbull Warren of the 48th Highlanders, Toronto, coming out of a store on the opposite side of the square had been killed by a flying fragment of the same shell.

We wondered whether the milliners had escaped, and somewhat depressed, drove along in search of another restaurant. A sign "Chocolat" on a door in a side street made us inquire, and, curiously enough, we found this also to be a little restaurant kept by two other milliners. They informed us that the first three milliners had escaped when the bombardment began, and before their restaurant had been blown up. One's interest in a place or in a battle is often in direct proportion to the number of one's friends or acquaintances there.

After lunch we drove to Brielen, but found that the A.D.M.S., whom we were in search of, and his deputy were both out. We were shown maps of the salient, and had the area pointed out to us where the French joined up with the second and third brigades of Canadians, and where the British troops joined up with the Canadians. When about to leave, a friend, Major Maclaren of the 10th Infantry battalion, riding a mettlesome horse, rode up and I got out of the car and held the bridle while we had a long talk about the experiences of the Canadians since we had left Salisbury Plain.

We then drove back to the Ypres water pool, which was the largest supply of drinking water in the area. There were at least thirty-five water carts in line waiting their turn to fill up at this presumably good supply. We were told that it was safe because twice a week a couple of pounds of chloride of lime were chucked into the middle of the pool. We took samples of the water and passed on to Wieltze, intending to walk into the salient to see what "No man's Land" was like. Men had told us that, unlike the rest of the front near the trenches, there were no growing crops, and no birds sang in that desolate, dreary, shell-shattered area, and we wanted to see it for ourselves.

We were surprised and delighted to find Captain Scrimger, whom we had left convalescing at Bulford, England, in charge of the Advanced Dressing Station. He had just arrived that afternoon, and was in hopes of getting his old battalion again, explaining that on account of his illness in England he had been temporarily replaced as regimental medical officer by Captain Boyd. We talked with him in the little estaminet in which the dressing station was located, while the old woman who kept the place and two peasants chatted quietly together in a corner and drank beer. I wondered at the time whether they were spies. Captain Scrimger walked with us up to the edge of the village and then returned to his charge.

At the outskirts of the village we noticed a peasant planting seeds in the little garden in front of his house. The earth had all been dug and raked smooth by a boy and a couple of children. To our "Bon jour" he replied, and added "Il fait bon temps n'est ce pas?" looking up at the sun with evident satisfaction.

No motor transport was allowed to pass Wieltze because the road beyond was exceedingly rough, and it would only have been inviting disaster from breakdowns and German shells to have proceeded farther.