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

by John Allister Currie

It is wonderful how careless of danger people become. In the afternoon while I was out riding the Huns started shelling the station and town. Half a dozen British Howitzers 9.2 inch guns started to reply. The German high explosive shells, or "Hiex" as they were called there, were falling five or six hundred yards off, still the children were playing in the street and a bunch of little girls were skipping with a rope. That night there were several outbursts of rifle fire, and it sounded very much as if an attack was taking place in the section of the trenches held by the Royal Montreal Regiment.

When we got up the next morning the sun was shining very brilliantly. A big British naval gun had opened fire on the German lines, and overhead two aeroplanes were sailing about directing the fire of the naval gun. The Germans had opened fire on the aeroplanes with anti-air craft guns, and their shells were bursting high in the air in white puffs like Japanese fireworks. We took our field glasses out to the square in front of our billet and could follow the course of the air craft quite plainly. After each one of our shells fell the plane would shoot a rocket as a signal. The German air craft shells fell hundreds of yards short. The aeroplanes soon rose to such a height that the German guns quit firing on them. The British naval planes were beautiful large craft. On the frontier we had already established air preponderancy and were also doing well now with our artillery.

About five o'clock Colonel Levison-Gower sent a guide to take me to the ruined Chateau near the trenches where he had his headquarters. Captain Darling and Major Marshall and Surgeon Major MacKenzie accompanied me. We took our horses as the Chateau was about two miles down the road. The road wound along like a serpent with about every second house on either side blown up with shell fire or the walls peppered with rifle bullets. The British guns were growling on either side. This is an old historic road. Many a time William the Silent, Count Alva, and the great Marlboro galloped along it. Lille, the great masterpiece of fortification designed by Vauban, is only a few kilometers further on. We were beginning to think and calculate now in kilometers. After a smart trot of about twenty minutes we came to a coal yard on the left side of the road. We had passed a number of batteries of heavy guns in position ready to open fire.

It was a beautiful evening. The moon was in its first quarter and there was every prospect of a bright night. At the wood yard we were told to stable our horses, and pretty soon we were struggling along the muddy paving stones on our way to the Chateau. We had on one side passed a small cemetery that had been set aside for the British and Canadian soldiers shot in the trenches. I should have said that just before I left, word had come in that Private Ford of "H" Company had been shot in the thigh. This was our first casualty. A bullet struck a British soldier of the Westminsters in the shoulder and cut into Ford's thigh, failing to go through. Ford was a fine brave man. He and another chum came over from the Edmonton Regiment just before we left Lark Hill. He asked to be allowed to join the 48th, and as he was a very likely chap, with a clean conduct sheet, I said, "come along." He was steward of the Edmonton Club and joined at the outbreak of the war. He was hit in the thigh, and the fact that he was wearing the kilt greatly facilitated the bleeding of his wound being stopped. He had two small arteries cut, but the first aid dressing which he carried was soon tied over the wound and the hemorrhage ceased.

It was still light when we got to the Chateau. Colonel Levison-Gower welcomed us into what was originally the kitchen, where a beautiful range decorated with tiles made the room look very cheerful. Several of his officers were there having tea, and I was offered a cup which I accepted. We sat around waiting for darkness. It was going to be a moonlight night, just the night for sharpshooters, but we had some good sharpshooters of our own out in front of where we were going, and we felt that not even a hare could get through the lines. When it became dark Colonel Levison-Gower said "get ready," and began putting on his togs. He wore an old Burberry coat with the skirts cut off, heavy trench boots, a slouch British cap and armed himself with a long pole, in other words a stable broom handle. He gave me one and said, "This will help you to find a footing in the trenches." We started out the front door of the shattered house, turned to the right past the driving shed where a sentry sharply challenged us. It was one of those moonlight nights with a bit of a haze making objects indistinct and exaggerating them. We started out across the fields towards the trenches. There was plenty of light to see our way across several ditches. The ground was perfectly flat and the outlines of several pollard willow stubs, with a bundle of small branches growing out of them, etched themselves on my memory.

"Ware wire," said the Colonel, who walked ahead to show the way. I ducked a field telephone wire strung between trees.

"Ware wire," he said again, and I found we were making our way between barbed wire entanglements.

"These are the breastworks," he said, pointing to ghostly heaps that loomed on either side. "We line them every night, they furnish our support."

Several wet ditches were jumped by the aid of the broom handles we carried. The ditches in Flanders are exceedingly deep and the gunners find much trouble in negotiating them.

The Colonel pointed out a line of shelter trenches his men held on the first advance. They held these trenches where they "dug themselves in" on the first night they won this ground. A little further on we came to small holes dug in the beet field.