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

by John Allister Currie

"Here is where they did some digging that afternoon." "They are pretty shallow fire trenches, barely deep enough to give cover to a man." Pretty soon a shadow loomed up ahead of us. "This is our first line of trenches," he said.

The line of trenches proved to be a wall of mud, willow hurdles and sand bags; in reality two walls. I followed him down a short bit of zigzag ditch or communicating trenches and found myself in the trenches that will go down to history, the famous trenches of Flanders.

It would require the pen of a Dante to picture this inferno. Day and night, night and day the rifles were cracking like the sound of a big rifle match on the ranges at home. Two lines of parapets, for there are really very few trenches, wind sinuously over the country from the sea to the Alps. These parapets are about the height of a man, and run in zigzag fashion. Here and there where the wall is specially built a dugout is constructed that will hold four or five men. In these huts the men cook and sleep during the day.

At night they come out like moles digging or straightening their defences or else running saps towards the enemy. Here and there along the line about every hundred feet a machine gun position is built into the wall. These positions are not disclosed. The sharp "chop" of the Ross Rifle, the hoarser report of the Lee Enfield and the double cough "To hoo" of the German Mauser made it impossible for any conversation to go on except at very close range. Now and again an eighteen pounder would crack wickedly in our rear and its projectile went screaming overhead down to the rear of the German lines to keep the supports and reserves in their "funk holes." Now and then a German bullet would strike the edge of the parapets in our front and ricochet with a wicked note overhead. The air was filled with a swishing sound as if thousands of swallows were passing overhead. Down the line of the trenches we went to the right, then back to the left. The new relief were going in and manning the parapets. Manning the parapets means standing in a recess built into the wall of the parapets on the side away from the enemy. At stated periods during the night the men man or line the parapets ready for an attack. "Tut tut tut," sung out a German Maxim and a shower of the bullets swished uncomfortably close. "Bir-r-r-r," replied a British Vickers that fires twice as fast, and the German subsided.

Death was sailing about in the air everywhere, but everybody went on with their "business as usual." The Canadians were cool under fire, just as cool as the British Tommy, and violent language and "swank" was very little in evidence. After inspecting the line we walked back across the turnip field in the fitful moonlight to the ruined Chateau.

"How is it all going to end?" I asked Colonel Levison-Gower.

"We will have to break through when the time comes," he said, "and we can do it if they give us support."

The total losses in his corps since he came over in September has been over fifteen hundred. Very few of the original battalion remained. I forgot to say that in the trenches we met Captain Street, son of the late Judge Street of Toronto. He had been distinguishing himself as a very brave man. He had been caught out the day before in front of the trenches on the devil's strip with a scouting party as a fog lifted and two of his men were wounded. He had his own clothes ripped with the German bullets. He got his men in safe and doubtless will get his decoration. We returned to our quarters, had a bite and went to bed.

On the morning of the 28th word came from the trenches that Private Ferland of my regiment had been struck in the head and killed. Ferland transferred to the 48th at Valcartier. He had seen service in the American Army and Navy and wore a medal for bravery which I understood he had won in the Philippines. He was of French Canadian descent and was a very good soldier. When the time came to man the parapets in the morning he jumped up on the banquette and called to his comrades to come along and not be lazy. He was tall and his head was above the parapet and two bullets caught him, one in the eye, the other in the temple. He was stone dead when he fell. He belonged to Captain Alexander's Company and the Captain felt very badly about him. They took the body out in the evening. He was a Roman Catholic and his nearest of kin lived in Quebec. The next morning the Sherwoods had a casualty. A soldier was shot through the heart by a sniper. There was one consolation, my men claimed they got the men of two patrols of Germans. In one patrol there were six men, and the six went down on the first volley. One got up and tried to make his trench, but poor fellow they were too much for him. It seemed cruel and rather rough, but the Prussians are not sports, they snipe all the time and when a man falls they fire away at his body for hours to make sure he is not "foxing." This war is a game without an umpire or referee.

We buried Ferland at nine o'clock the next morning. Reverend Father Sylvester performed the service which was very simple. The section to which he belonged marched to the little graveyard. Bullets sang over our heads and pattered on the clay tiles of the barn as the simple Latin service of the old church was read. High in the easterly sky a German aeroplane hovered and our guns were making trouble for him.