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

by John Allister Currie

CHAPTER XXIII[ToC]

THE BATTLE OF ST. JULIEN

It did not take us very long to realize that a great disaster had befallen our gallant Allies who held the northern face of the salient. The Turcos in broken French explained that the Germans had sent asphyxiating gas from their trenches, and that the gas had killed one quarter of their men. For weeks we had been warned that the Germans were going to use asphyxiating gasses against us, but no one had ever dreamed that they would be so inhuman as to use gas that would kill, but they had done so, for the Turcos told us that many of their men had fallen dead where they stood.

The gas used was chlorine gas which is one of the by-products of the process whereby common salt is turned into soda, salt being a combination of soda and chlorine. When the salt is heated along with an acid the chlorine gas is liberated, the soda remaining. This soda is used in manufacturing soap. The chlorine is generally combined with lime to make chloride of lime or bleaching powder. In the chemical works of Germany the amalgamation of chlorine and lime was omitted, the chlorine being liquified under pressure in tanks. This liquid chlorine was a cheap preparation used largely for bleaching linens and cloth of various kinds manufactured in the districts in which we were fighting. The bleacheries were silent and there was no longer any use in the cloth industry for the German chlorine gas, so the Germans having plenty of it on hand no doubt decided to use it against the Allies.

We had staid a trifle too long in the village of St. Julien while the streets were filled with this deadly gas. Some of our orderlies could hardly escape and several of the headquarters staff had to be sent to the hospital. I had taken on a pretty stiff cargo of it myself. When it is first breathed it is not unpleasant, smelling not unlike chloroform, but very soon it stings the mucous membrane of the mouth, the eyes, and the nose. The lungs feel as if they were filled with rheumatism. The tissues of the lungs are scalded and broken down, and it takes a man a long time to recover, if he ever does fully recover after having some of the "upholstering" of his lungs destroyed. We did not then quite realize the horror of this new form of cowardly and inhuman warfare, but we should have known that the Germans consider war a game without an umpire or a referee.

Sniping Through a Port Hole[ToList]

Messages came promptly from General Turner, V.C., of the Third Brigade to hang on, that the Canadians were going to try and hold the Germans back until help came. We all knew we could depend on General Turner, V.C., and his Brigade-Major, Lt.-Colonel Garnet Hughes. We knew that we were fighting a rear guard action and that this was no time to think of running away. We hardly realized, however, that the Battle of St. Julien which had just commenced was to be one of the greatest battles in the history of the world, that the Canadian casualties were to be as great as the casualties of the British at Waterloo, that the total casualties of the combatants before the fight was ended were to number close to seventy thousand men, and that the Canadians, by brave fighting and losing sixty per cent. of their men for three days, were to hold in check five German army corps, or a total of close to a quarter of a million men.

The brunt of the fighting fell to the lot of the Third Canadian (Highland Brigade). Through their lines ran the frightened and disorganized Turcos, groaning and shrieking in agony and fright. The French artillery men, finding their lines broken and confronted with the deadly wall of chlorine gas which rolled slowly over the ground turning the budding leaves of the trees, the spring flowers and the grass a sickly white, destroying every living creature in its path, blasting and shrivelling everything over which it swept, cut their horses loose and fled, in many cases two of them clinging to one horse. Ten batteries, it is said, were lost in this way, a gap of nearly six miles was made in the French line through which the Germans poured firing rifles, machine guns and cannon at the fugitives. A Turco Division, and part of a French Division had fled. A remnant of French troops belonging to the "Iron Divisions" held on next the canal.