General Smith-Dorrien, at the conclusion of the review, called the men together and addressed them in a similar strain, and then we were ordered to march our battalions off to their billets.
It was a great pleasure to hear a few words of commendation from such a great soldier as General Smith-Dorrien, for the first Canadian Division had been greatly lied about and maligned in England. Every offence on the calendar had been charged against it, and one would have thought, instead of being composed as it was of young, well educated and well-behaved men, it was the off-scourings of the Canadian prisons and jails.
If we were well drilled we owed it all to ourselves. We went to England filled with high hopes that we were to be associated with British Regulars and to have the best of British instruction. We were disappointed from the first. No British troops were associated with us. We had to work out our own salvation.
But the Canadian officers were a self-reliant lot, so the drill manuals were conned carefully and the men were exercised in a sound system that made the companies great self-confident fighting machines. Every officer was on his metal and worked hard to bring his men to perfection in spite of mud and rain and all sorts of difficulties worse than we ever encountered in Flanders.
Comparisons are odious, but experience has shown that the Canadian officer, on the whole, is equal to any officer in the British army. His Majesty graciously ordered that we were to be classed as "regular Imperial officers." We had to line up to that standard.
The present war is altogether unlike previous experiences in the British army. "Forget South Africa" became a byword. The numbers are so great and the ground so restricted that new conditions have arisen. The Canadians quickly assimilated the new conditions.
On the morning of April 15th the battalion paraded at its billets at Ryveld and marched to Beauvoorde. This hamlet consisted of a couple of stores and a saloon. The men were quartered on farms. On one side of the road is Belgium, the other side is France. I was quartered in the estament or saloon, and the landlady told me that in the room in which I slept a German Prince Este had slept the night before he was killed by the British near Caestre. This was very cheerful news, and I am thankful I did not have his luck.
Trenches at Neuve Chapelle[ToList]