Marvelous is the only word to describe the endurance, the valor of the Ladies from Hell. They withstood the gas, and they withstood wave after wave of attacking German hordes. And yet even their wonderful work was overtopped by that of the Eighth, which, being exposed on the left by the black troops who had fled, had to bear the brunt of a fight which almost surrounded them.
It was wonderful. I shall never forget it. There were twelve thousand Canadian troops. In the German official reports after the battle, they stated that they had used one hundred and twenty thousand men against us, and one thousand guns. We had not one gun. Those that we had were captured when the African blacks had left. It was our strength against theirs—no, it was white man's spirit against barbarian brutality.
For six days and nights that terrible death struggle continued. Every man was engaged: cooks, doctors, stretcher-bearers, chaplains, every one of us held a rifle. The wounded who had to take their chance of living because there was no way to convey them back to shelter—some of them would sit up, if they possibly could, to load and load again rifles which they lifted from dead comrades. They would hand us these as our rifles got too hot to hold. And still the German attacks persisted. Still they came on. And still we did not budge an inch from our position as it was when the gas first came over. They did not gain a yard, though when the British reserves at last reached us, there were only two thousand of us left standing on our feet; two thousand of us who were whole from out the twelve thousand that had started in to repel the attack.
The two thousand of us were still in the old position. Still we held in our safe-keeping the key of the road to Calais, to Paris, to London and farther. The key to world power which the Hohenzollern coveted.
Behind Ypres to-day there lie four thousand five hundred of the flower of the Canadian contingent. Four thousand five hundred young men who made the extreme sacrifice for King, for Flag, for Country, for Right. They lie in their narrow beds of earth, and over them wave the shading leaves of maple trees. For thoughtful citizens sent over and had planted "Canada's little maple grove"—a monument in a strange country to the men who fought and died and were not defeated.
On the night of April twenty-second, General Alderson and his officers saw that the situation was desperate. They thought to save their men. The general sent up the command: "Retire!"
The word first reached the Little Black Devils. The men heard it, the officers heard it, and they looked over the flattened parapet of their trench. They saw the oncoming hordes of brutes in a hellish-looking garb, and they sent back the answer: "Retire be damned!"
The general, the officers, rested content. With a spirit such as these men showed even against desperate odds, nothing but victory could result.
The gas and the attacking waves of men poured on. We were not frightened. No; none of us showed fear. Warfare such as this does not scare men with red blood in their veins. The Germans judge others by themselves. A German can be scared, a German can be bluffed. They thought that we were of the same mettle, or lesser. At the Somme we put over on the enemy the only new thing that we have been able to spring during the whole three years—the tanks. Were they scared? They were terrified! They dropped rifles, bayonets, knapsacks, everything—and ran. Had not our tanks stuck in the awful mud of France, or had they a trifle more speed, I believe it might have been possible for us to have reached Berlin by this time.