Shortly after luncheon Captain Warren and Lieutenant Macdonald came to the orderly room to ask some questions about the order in which we were to march into the trenches. An officer from each company had gone into these trenches the night before and looked them carefully over. The left section was given to Captain Osborne, the right to Captain McGregor and the centre to Captain MacLaren. The position consisted of seventeen half moon redoubts and they were not at all strong. Captain Alexander's company was to be in reserve with headquarters at St. Julien. As the officers had received orders not to go away from their billeting area, and had to receive permission to do so, both Warren and Macdonald asked me if they could go up to the Cloth Square to buy some comforts to take down into the trenches for the men. I gave my consent, but warned them to be careful and take cover from any shells that came along. About ten minutes later Lieutenant Macdonald arrived back breathless. He asked quite coolly, "Where is Major MacKenzie? Trum's hit with a piece of shell."
I immediately called the major, who was in the next room, and we learned that "Trum," as Captain Warren was affectionately called, had been badly wounded. He and Macdonald were standing in a grocery store at the north side of the square when a "Jack Johnson," as the huge seventeen inch shells fired by the Germans from the Austrian howitzers they have brought up to shell this town are called, fell into a building in the south side just opposite. The shell wrecked the building into which it fell, killing an officer and seventeen men. A piece about an inch square flew fully two hundred yards across the square, passed through a plate glass window, missed Macdonald by an inch, and struck Warren below the right collar bone piercing his lung. "They have got me in the back, Fred," were the last words he said. He was carried on a stretcher to the hospital a few hundred yards away, and the surgeon made an examination of his injury, cutting his clothing away. In a moment we saw there was no hope for him. It was only a matter of a few minutes. Canon Scott heard that he had been injured and hurried to the hospital. He had only time to repeat the prayer for the dying as poor Warren passed away in Major MacKenzie's arms. His death was a great loss to the regiment.
The Original Salient at Ypres[ToList]
I left the arrangements for the funeral with our Quartermaster, Captain Duguid. He was to be buried the next night at the Place D'Amour.
Truly, this was a war of attrition. One by one we were losing the gallant young officers that came over with us to Flanders. Darling was wounded, Sinclair wounded, Warren killed. Sinclair had had a dixie of boiling water spilled on his leg while in the trenches and had received a very severe burn.
In the evening Captain Perry arrived from blowing up Hill 60. He had escaped as usual without a scratch. Perry bore a charmed life. I suppose it was because he lived so much in the north country in Canada among the miners who always carry a stick of dynamite in their boot legs. At the Rue Pettion billet he escaped the "coal box" that entered the next room in which Captain McGregor slept. The shell made pulp out of McGregor's clothes and belongings, but Perry was not scratched, although not ten feet away from where the shell burst. At Hill 60 he assisted the British engineer to run several mines under the German trenches. He was the last man out of the tunnels when they were loaded with several car loads of dynamite, and his was the grimy hand that touched the button that sent half the Hill and about eight hundred Germans into the air. He had a narrow escape from being buried alive.
Captain Perry had a terrible experience after the mine was blown up. As soon as the mine blew up the Germans turned all their artillery on the crater to prevent the British from taking possession till they could bring up reserves. The place became a living hell. Perry, after examining the crater with a lantern, found a German counter mine with a candle still burning in it. It had been vacated. He started to make his way out through a communication trench to make his report when he ran into a British brigade coming in and had to lie down in the trench and let the brigade pass over him. He was mud and sand from head to foot.