The friends of the regiment at home were kind enough to present our battalion with Khaki Tam O' Shanters which we used in the trenches. They were a splendid headdress and we had very few casualties during our various turns of duty in the front line, which good fortune we ascribed to this headdress. General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien was very much taken with the "tam" as a trench cap.
On the morning of March 8th, while Major MacKenzie and I were having coffee, the Germans began shelling our quarters. We were in an old brick house on the Rue Pettion and our breakfast was rudely disturbed by several loud reports. One of the orderlies came in to say that German shells were falling in the field in front of the house. We went out to see what was happening. The Germans were firing salvos of four shells at a time and "searching" for my humble quarters. First four shells fell about fifty yards apart about five hundred yards away to the right looking to our rear. Then four more came closer. Salvo followed salvo but a number of the shells failed to explode. After they had raked out our front yard we heard four burst behind our quarters and we knew that the next bracket would get our happy home. It did. Four struck the barn and the quarters occupied by Captain McGregor and his staff fifty feet away from where we stood. We feared that our cows were gone, done to death by miserable Hun gunners. When we took over these quarters the Scots Guards were good enough to turn over three cows in good milking trim to our headquarters. These three cows were all that were left on the farm of a fine herd of brown Swiss cattle. The rest of the herd were scattered about the fields with their feet sticking up in the air, and it was our unpleasant duty to later on bury them darkly at dead of night. We forgot our three milkers for the moment, however, as we heard the whistling of more shells and orders were given for everybody to duck and get under cover. Two shells struck the house and tore about two inches off the tile ridge at intervals of about ten feet apart. They fell in the ditch in front of the house but failed to explode. Four more fell to the right, and then the gunners began to rake back and forward, dropping in all about fifty shells within a radius of five hundred yards. Then they took up another target and we had leisure to examine the damage. Our shack had escaped except for a few broken tiles, the next building south occupied by Captain McGregor had one room blown up, that in which he had his cot. Fortunately he was out when the German visitors arrived. The shell, a four inch high explosive, tore a couple of sandbags out of the back window, and as it apparently had a "delay action" fuse it burst fairly in the middle of the room. There was nothing left of Captain McGregor's cot but a pile of woollen shreds. His trunk and the clothing hanging on the wall were ripped to pieces.
Captain Perry was having a bath in an old fashioned wash tub in the next room when the explosion took place. Nothing happened to him as he bore a charmed life.
Some of the shells that fell into the ditch were dug up by Sergeant Lewis who was in charge of our pioneers. They were four inch high explosives.
CHAPTER XVI[ToC]
WITH GENERAL SIR DOUGLAS HAIG
When we left the trenches at Fromelles for the first time we took up billets on the Rue Du Quesne. This street was named after a one-time General and Governor of Canada during the French regime. His name is still perpetuated in the great steel works at Pittsburg, U.S.A., along with that of Lord Pitt and Braddock, for it was before Fort Du Quesne that General Braddock fell in 1755. Braddock was one of those unfortunate British Generals who were sent out to command colonials. He would not take the advice of his colonial officers and paid the penalty of his unpreparedness with his life. A comparison of Indian warfare of one hundred and fifty years ago with the war of to-day will convince anyone that the Red Indians on the warpath had nothing on the Germans. They burned houses and killed innocent women and children. For these atrocities they gained unenviable notoriety. The Germans do the same things. Hardly a farm house where we were billeted that did not have the graves of the peaceful occupants in the gardens close by. Men, women and children were destroyed by shell and other implements of war. At Armentieres we were shown Belgian children whose hands had been hacked off, and at the farms we saw old men maimed and with withered arms and legs still bearing the marks of the cords which bound them to trees and posts.