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

by John Allister Currie

We got through loading early in the afternoon and later on the mules arrived in charge of Sergeant Fisher and were safely tucked on board. I had a little trouble keeping people off the dock who were intent on handing liquor to my men.

We were pretty well crowded up and I was informed that this ship had been wrecked once, but the good old C.P.R. flag was floating at the mast head and we took that for an omen of good luck, and it was. During the afternoon I told the men off to the life-boat stations and received the cheerful information that the ship was short a few life belts. I intended to have carried an inner motor cycle tube for my personal use, but forgot to take it along, so would have had to take my chances on a hen coop or a hatch if anything had gone wrong.

The men were in great good humor. They were singing like larks. Some of them had left newly married wives at home in England. One at least, one of my best men, was too much married as he had left two wives behind. He had joined the regiment in Toronto and had given his separation allowance to a wife in Paisley. When we got to Salisbury another woman wrote from Glasgow saying she was his wife and claiming the allowance. In an unfortunate moment he had taken a trip to Paisley and wife No. 1 had pounced on him while he was visiting wife No. 2 and there was a scene. She wrote to me threatening to have him arrested for bigamy. I saw this would not do as there were three interests demanding satisfaction. First, there was his duty to the King. It had cost a lot of money to train him and bring him so far. He would be no use to the King in gaol for bigamy and would be only a further expense to the country and a good soldier would be lost to the service. So I suggested to Wife No. 1 that she leave him alone till after the war if he gave her an assignment of his pay of twenty dollars a month. Like a sensible Scotch woman she saw the wisdom of Solomon in my suggestion and accepted it. Wife No. 2 received the separation allowance and the King got the services of a first class soldier and all three interests were satisfied.

We embarked for France with not a dozen men in the regiment with entries on their conduct sheets. A better behaved lot of men it would be hard to find. We had succeeded in instilling in them the iron discipline of duty which was to prove better than the discipline of fear. It was Napoleon who said, "Show me the regiment that has the most punishments and I will show you the regiment that has the worst discipline." He was right.

We sailed during the early hours of the morning. I got up early and after some breakfast went on deck. Colonel Burchall Wood of the Divisional Staff had joined us on the previous afternoon, and as he was my senior officer I reported to him, but he said he preferred to be my guest and for me to take command. The Captain who was a Welshman named Griffith told me he wanted a guard of fifty men fore and aft with loaded rifles to look out for submarines. We also mounted two machine guns on the bridge so we pitied the submarine that would come along. The Mount Temple could make ten knots in calm weather and the Captain told me that he intended, if a "sub." showed up, to go for it full tilt and run it down.

By ten o'clock we were well out in the British channel. The Welsh Hills were covered with snow and it was a delightful day, hardly a ripple on the surface. Two destroyers, Numbers "1" and "2," kept doing "stunts" back and forward ahead of us all day.

Before dealing with France or anything further, I desire to say that the Canadian Ordnance Officers were very hard worked and had to make "bricks without straw." The death of Colonel Strange made a vacancy which should have gone to Captain Donaldson, a Canadian, my Quartermaster, and no better or more experienced officer ever served the King.

A British officer, however, was called in to do the work. The difference between a British officer of the old school and the Canadian is that when the former is confronted with some work he says, "I'll call my man," that is a non-commissioned officer with a "red tape" training, to do the job. The Canadian takes the responsibility himself and sees that the matter is attended to.

The first evening was bright and clear and I tried my field glasses on the stars. The Captain told me the barometer was falling and that we were likely to have a change of weather.

The thirteenth is generally a tough day with everybody and this was no exception. I was aroused shortly after daylight by a loud noise, the banging of furniture and the sound of dishes rattling. Sure enough we were having a storm. The first officer was in the hall. His room was opposite to mine and he was trying to get in, but the drawers and chairs in his room had piled up against the door. I asked him what was wrong and he said he wanted a surgeon as he had hurt his leg. One of the boats had got loose and while fastening it he had his leg jammed. The boat had been carried away. The ship was going like a pendulum, swinging nearly forty-five degrees every jump. One minute I looked down on Major Marshall who was in the top bunk over on the opposite side of our cabin, the next minute the curtains on his bunk hung straight over my head. Then the ship would take a turn and stand on her head, and the roar of the screw told us there was still plenty of steam in the boilers. Then the screws would submerge and the shock would send a shiver all over the ship. We were in the "chops" of the channel all right. It looked as if the storm would get us if the submarines did not. I told the first officer that the doctor was in a room in the sick bay, and he was helped away limping along the deck. Captain Frank Perry came along as cheerful as a morning in June. He was Officer of the Day and a first class sailor. He came to my room to report that there was a big gale outside, that the men were all right, very few sick, that an artillery horse had broken out of his stall and that he was down and likely dead; also that the waggons were loose in the hold forward with one or two waltzing around. While he was telling this he had to sit on the floor of the cabin. He had split his oil cloth coat up the back, and a stray door speeding the parting guest had slammed on a very tender part of his body, making it difficult for him even to sit down. I laughed till my sides ached.