"The Red Watch": With the First Canadian Division in Flanders

by John Allister Currie

He was not the only man relieved.

We dressed the wound with iodine and put a pad and a piece of plaster over it. He put on his clothes and I told him to go back to the dressing station, but he refused and kept on fighting.

We held the narrow trenches all afternoon and evening. Fierce fighting was going on all around us and we spent a very disagreeable night dug in in Mother earth.

My men endeavored in every way possible to make me comfortable. Sergt. Coe requisitioned a long bolster pillow from a ruined estament in Wiltje for me to sleep on. Another man brought in a few fresh eggs that some Flemish hens had laid in a henhouse in the outskirts of the village. The occupants of Wiltje had all disappeared. Some of them were dead in their cellars, which were not proof against the high explosive shells.

Towards dawn in spite of the lurid glare of bursting shells and the roaring of the flames in the burning houses, the Flemish roosters crowed lustily, typifying the Belgian as well as the French nation.

Dawn came at last but it brought no cessation of the terrible artillery fire. The fighting along the line to the north still continued. The British troops were holding their own and dealing lusty blows at the enemy.

This was the situation as outlined by Corporal Pyke, one of my signalling staff who had gone away to the right to see what was going on in the old "hot corner." A British Division had taken up the supporting trenches of the 2nd Canadian Brigade along the crest of the Gravenstafel Ridge. They had our supporting trenches east of Hennebeke Creek along the Kerrselaer Zonnebeke highway to the ruined houses at Enfiladed crossroads where I had met Captain Victor Currie and the officers of the 7th and 8th Battalions.

The 2nd Brigade, all that was left of them, had been kept hard at it in this section and were still in reserve behind the 28th Division. The line of the 28th Division ran thus from Gravenstafel to Fortuyn, which was still held by us, and along west to where the headquarters trenches crossed the St. Julien-Ypres Road at Vanenberghem, from thence almost due west to a part of the Yperlee Canal near Zwaante. The east bank of the canal was held by the French and Belgians. The Germans had crossed the canal the night of the 22nd at Lizerne and had been driven back at the point of the bayonet by our allies.

Strung along from Gravenstafel Ridge in the following order were the following British Battalions: The Hants, the Rifle Brigade, the 12th London, the Suffolks, the Northumberland Fusiliers, five battalions, the 5th Durhams, the Somersets, the E. Yorks, the Yorkshire, two battalions, two battalions of Yorks and Durhams, the 5th S. Lancasters, the 1st R. Lancasters, the Lancaster Fusiliers, the Essex, the 1st Irish, the Monmouths, the 2nd West Riding, the London, the Royal Kents.

General Hull commanded the 1st R. Warwicks, the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders, the 1st and 2nd Fusiliers, the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers, the 7th Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders.