When I reached the village I found that Major Leckie was occupying the reserve headquarters of the 16th, and across the road was Colonel Meighen of the 14th or Montreal Regiment. The south section of the village was ours and the north was for the reserve corps of the battalion holding the left section of the line. The house in which we were quartered had at one time been a small restaurant, but the village had several times been shot up. The walls almost to the ceiling were plastered with blood. There was hardly a house in the village without several shell holes in the roof. Terrible tragedies had been enacted here. The gardens had a full crop of black and white crosses.
Colonel Meighen had a very swell house, the windows looking south towards Hooge and Hill 60. He came over and welcomed me to St. Julien and showed me his trench diary and plans of the trenches. Colonel Meighen was a very thorough and painstaking officer, very much loved by his men. Several companies of his battalion were French Canadians and they fairly worshipped him. He was a model trench commandant, never tired of strengthening the works, and always ready himself to do anything that he asked of his officers or men. He had made an excellent battalion out of his corps, and as we had alternated with them in the trenches until this turn, we knew their worth. His second in command, Colonel Burland, was also a keen and efficient officer. The commandant of the 14th was not a "fusser." He was always cool and collected and his example permeated his whole staff and officers. Captain Holt, his adjutant, was one of the hardest working officers in the division, cheerful, obedient and alert. He was a model staff officer.
Major Leckie turned over the trench diary to my adjutant. He reported that the 16th were hard at work fixing up the trenches which were in a very poor condition. His brother, Colonel Leckie, was down at commandant headquarters in the supporting trenches. Major Marshall went down to take over from Colonel Leckie, and I stayed at report headquarters to report back as quickly as possible that the trenches had been taken over. The 16th Battalion did not take very long to get out, and one by one our Captains reported their companies in place.
The battalions in the trenches reported that the front was quiet, and it was added that there had not been a casualty in our section among the French troops for a month.
My sleeping bag was placed in a corner of the only room with a sound roof in the house, and I slept soundly in spite of the blood-bespattered wall which told of a desperate struggle in this room during the great battles of the previous November.
In spite of the fact that the French had not had a casualty for a month, the map told me we were in the hottest corner in the whole of Flanders. I did not feel at all nervous, as a matter of fact after a person has been under shell and rifle fire for a few days he ceases to be nervous. Nerves are for those who stay at home. At first the heart action quickens a little with the sound of the explosions and the crack of the Mauser bullets, but after a while the nerves fail to respond and the action of the heart becomes slow and the beats below normal. The explosion of a "Jack Johnson" in the next room will not give you a tremor. Why should it? Jock will say, "If you are going to be kilt, you will be kilt ony-way." That is the everyday religion of the trenches. "When your time comes you will get yours, and all the machine guns and shells in Germany can have no potency if your time has not come."
The Famous Road To Ypres.[ToList]
War tends to make us all fatalists, and the officers have to be continually on the alert to keep the men from becoming careless.