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

by John Allister Currie

On top of all this came a very inspiring address from General Sir Douglas Haig, commanding our army. He pointed out that the time had come for a fresh great effort. He also informed us that we were stronger than the enemy, all of which gave us more confidence.

I was told privately that the drive was to take place on our right, and as soon as the brigade on our right had cleared out the Germans on their front that we were to echelon and follow suit and charge.

On our right the Germans were four hundred yards away across the open. I went down and examined the lines carefully with Captain Daniels, and found that there were two places where a lot of men could be taken out of our trenches and led half way across to the German lines on "dead" ground, that is ground on which they would be hidden. Lieutenant Schonberger and Captain Warren made a sketch of this ground. I talked the matter over with the captains and they were very much cheered up over the prospect of a fight. Captains MacLaren and Daniels immediately began fixing up exits from their trenches. Steps were cut in the parapets, and in other places openings were made. The opening in the parapets that were used for "listening" posts and for the patrols to go in and out were widened.

What is a listening post? A listening post is made in this way: A gap which is carefully hidden with sandbags is cut in the parapets. Then a sap is run out several hundred feet in zigzag fashion, which terminates in a rifle pit, about five feet deep that will accommodate about four men. At night two sentries sit in this pit and listen to the sounds in the enemy's lines. Sometimes if the rifle pit is wet a couple of barrels are put in and the sentries stand in the barrels. They notify the trenches of any unusual movement or sounds made by the enemy.

In the evening we left the trenches and went into divisional reserve at Rue Du Quesne. Let me give you some idea of the lay of the country. There is a road about every kilometer and they run roughly northwest and northeast.

Running southwest and almost parallel with the trenches was Rue Pettion, a short road that terminated at the Fromelles road near our headquarters. The next street, a little over a mile back, is Rue Du Bois, north of the Fromelles Road, south of the Fromelles Road it is called the Rue De Tilleloy. At the corner there was a shrine which had suffered from shell fire and which Canon Scott had immortalized in a poem, the best he has written and the best I have read since the war began. The next street back is the Rue Du Quesne. Right through the centre of our position ran the Fromelles Road. A kilometer southwest, the trench line is crossed by the road to Aubers called the Rue D'Enfer, or in our language, the Road to Hell. If this road is paved with good intentions I have never seen any of them. It is strongly held by the Germans. The "intentions" take the form of "crump" holes excavated by German shells in the pavement.

The country on our side is perfectly flat and full of hedges and ditches. Every hedge concealed a battery of guns of all kinds and sizes. On the German side, half a mile back from their trenches, the ground slopes up. The villages of Aubers and Fromelle are on the western slope and the ridge behind is our true objective. On the ridge we could see the church steeples of Herlies to the right and Fournes to the left, while here and there peep the derricks, or as we in America call them the "breakers" of coal pits. Beyond the ridge the land slopes to the Scheldt. It was on the eastern slope of this ridge that Cæsar fought his greatest battles. There the Nervli charged across the stream in thousands and fought until hardly a man of them was left, fought until their dead were piled up breast high, fought till Cæsar had to take a buckler and spear from a fallen soldier to defend himself. On all sides, from the horizon downward, rows of tall elm trees cast their gaunt leafless branches in the air. Between them were a sea of hedges and green brown boles of pollard willows. Elms generally grew along the roadways and the limbs for fifty feet up are trimmed off annually and tied up into faggots. The willows grew along the ditches. They are trimmed off about twelve or fourteen feet above the ground and the new branches that sprout out from their trunks provide faggots for firewood as well as withes for the manufacture of chairs, baskets and hampers. The faggots are sometimes placed in earthen pits and burned into charcoal, providing an excellent fuel for the interesting Dutch stoves found in the kitchens in this country.

For several days our guns had been registering on the enemy. That is to say, our artillery observing officers would go into the trenches with a telephone connected up with their batteries. Then the battery fires a shot at the enemy's parapets, generally well over. He reports the hit right or left, and then the range is reduced until the object is hit. That range direction and elevation is recorded in a register at the gun. The man who sets the gun does not see the object he is firing at at all, but he knows when his gun is trained in a certain line at a certain elevation he will hit that part of the enemy's parapet. We had all kinds of guns ready for the fray. The Canadian sixty pounders under Major McGee a few days before had smashed up the brown tower of Fromelles. This tower had been used by the Germans for an artillery observing station, and for several months the British had been firing at it without success. In about three shots McGee's guns got the tower and a half dozen shells reduced it to a hopeless ruin so that it was of no use to anyone. The church tower of Aubers followed suit. When the British Tommies heard the "birr" of the five-inch Canadian shells they all asked whose they were. The Scots thought they had come from Scotland. When they saw Aubers tower disappear in a cloud of dust they inquired again, "What bally gunners are those?" When told they were the Canadians, they said, "Bravo, Canadians, you are some class," and cheered heartily. This gave our gunners a reputation that lasted for the rest of the war.

Besides our five-inch guns we had our eighteen pounder batteries lined up and down behind us, also horse artillery guns from India and an armoured train manned by the navy. They had long six-inch guns that threw a terrible projectile. We had also some new fifteen-inch howitzers that had been brought over from England. "Grandmas" they called these guns because they were short and stout. "Grandma" when fired only gave a low grunt, but when her shell broke four or five miles off, it burst with a "Car-u-m-p" that rattled the windows and shook the earth down in our dugouts.

I had a very interesting time one day riding to a conference at the headquarters of General Sir H.S. Rawlinson, Bt. I came cantering along a road and a sudden turn brought us to a railway crossing. The naval guns were on an armoured train, the Churchill battery on either side of this crossing, and the gunners seemed to have wakened up for they began firing when we were about five hundred yards off. I was riding a powerful "Cayuse" or western horse, which Captain "Rudd" Marshall, with rare good judgment, had selected for me at Valcartier. He turned out to be a splendid charger. Although low set he carried me easily. He was as wise as an owl and as sure-footed as a cat. It took a good deal of courage on his part to face the naval battery firing for all it was worth, the flames from the black fiery muzzles of the guns almost scorching his hide, but he did it without flinching, although the jar of the guns almost shook him off his feet several times. I can quite realize the task of the Noble Six Hundred had in charging the Russian batteries at Balaclava. I have since seen a moving picture of this battery in action and recognized the raised gate of the railway crossing through which we rode, in the centre of the picture, and I wondered if the battery was "demonstrating" for the benefit of the moving picture photographer when we were passing through.