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

by John Allister Currie

As the night closed down the heavens were lit with the German flares and the lurid flashes from their guns. I took a long look over the battle line and I confess I thought our chances of ever getting out were very slim. The German flares crossed each other in the heavens behind us. In our left rear, and all around to the right rear, I could see the angry red flashes of the thousands of guns they were directing against our devoted defenders. I began counting the batteries, but after I had reached a hundred I concluded they had enough. Almost every calibre of gun was being used against us, from the great seventeen inch Austrian siege mortars they were firing at Ypres and Poperinghe behind us, to the nine, seven, six, five, four and three-inch high explosive shells that were filling the air with their fiendish notes.

Bayonets, brawn and bull-dog courage were all we had to match against all the resources of chemistry and mechanics of our enemies. They might poison us, destroy us or take a bit of the line here and there, but take the city of Ypres—not that summer, not so long as a Canadian arm was left to defend the stricken salient.

At twelve o'clock that night I checked up my sketch of our position after having a bowl of soup in Major Marshall's dugout. The second brigade line was untouched. So was the 48th. The 13th were withdrawn from their trenches and were digging in along the slope on our left flank. One company of the Buffs, one of the 5th and two companies of the 14th were mixed up in the line here, along with the three companies of the 7th that were consolidating their trenches along the Poelcapelle Road towards St. Julien where they linked up with the 48th, 13th and 14th Companies of the garrison. From the left flank of St. Julien, the 3rd Toronto Regiment, two companies, joined up with the 10th and 16th at St. Julien Wood. Then came Geddes' British Brigade, and on their left the 13th British Brigade under Brigadier-General R. Wanless O'Gowan. This brigade arrived in the afternoon from Hill 60. It was made up of what was left of the tired 1st West Kents, 2nd King's Own Borderers, 2nd York Light Infantry, 2nd West Riding, 9th London, all from the 5th Division that had lost half their officers at the crater blown up by Captain Perry. Next came the 1st and 4th Canadians, and then the French troops held as far as the canal.

There had been little or no change during the day. The honor of holding the dangerous angle of the great salient at Ypres had fallen to the lot of the Canadians. The Red Watch held the danger point, the toe. It was our duty to hang on and die to the last man until help came and the French line was reconstituted as it was when the French Turcos broke before the deadly gas. Like typical Highlanders we were the "Forlorn Hopes" of the Empire.

It was away after two o'clock in the morning when the shelling died down a bit in our front. I threw myself down in the dugout and fell asleep. I slept with revolver ready and boots on and got in a few winks. I was awakened at about a quarter to four by loud talking and the roar of guns. I jumped up and turned out to get a glimpse of what was going on in the trenches in front. I met Capt. Dansereau, who told me the Germans were again trying to gas the 48th. True enough, in the grey dawn a heavy yellow pall hung over our trenches and there was a sweet pungent smell of chlorine in the air. The two platoons that were in dugouts were at once sent to their stations in the supporting trenches. Major Marshall and Capt. Dansereau went into the trenches with them, while Lieutenant Shoenberger and I remained at the dugout trench at the telephone. There was a slight lull in the cannonading for a few minutes, then the German guns began to speak in louder and more insistent tones. I looked around the salient, shaped like a man's right foot, of which we were the toe, and hundreds of batteries seemed to be turned on our trenches, both front and supporting. Again and again salvos of "coal boxes" fell in succession along the parapet. Talk about Neuve Chapelle, we were getting our own back with interest. All the German batteries were concentrated on our parapets and the trenches held by our regiment. Pandemonium reigned along the front line of trenches. The Germans followed up their gasses again with intense rifle and machine gun fire. Up and down along the parapets of the redoubts the shells kept dropping, throwing up huge pyramids of black smoke fifty feet in the air. These blasts resembled rows of black trees or fountains. How anything could live in that seething vortex, created by the bursting high explosive shells, is a mystery. Many a brave Highlander would see the lone shielings and the misty mountains of Canada no more. All this time the Germans were industriously shelling the dugouts and supporting trenches where our supports were located and along the Gravenstafel Ridge. Huge shells fell like hail. Those that failed to burst in the air exploded the minute they struck the hard untilled clay of the fallow fields and fragments flew in every direction. One fell on the roadway about twenty feet away from me. Two men who were standing under cover of the broken wall of the windmill crumpled up like green leaves in a forest fire. They were done for. They were giving us a double "curtain of fire" as well as the death dealing gasses.

A piece of the same shell struck Lieutenant Shoenberger, my signalling officer, who stood close beside me, and he fell. He said never a word, but in a trice had his knife out, cut off his puttee and looked at his ankle. The bone was broken. Before I could give him a hand he had his first aid bandage out and tied up the wound himself. I offered to send a man with him to the dressing station a quarter of a mile back, but he said he would crawl down on his hands and knees all right and that every man would be needed in the trenches. He was quite cool and collected and did not show any sign of fear. I felt very sorry for him.

Nearly a century ago Admiral Lord Cochrane, a man of wonderful scientific knowledge, advanced a project to the British Government for a terrible and unseen agent which could be used against an enemy, and which was so destructive and powerful it would render their armies helpless. That secret was asphyxiating gas. His plan was on the field of battle when the wind was favorable to build large fires with tar and damp straw behind which an attack could be prepared. Then sulphur was to be thrown on these burning piles so as to produce gas, which blowing over the enemy would render them helpless. This would not produce a poisonous gas. It would only be an asphyxiating gas that would knock a man out for a while. Still the British had refused to use this secret.

In 1913 German scientists at the German Headquarters Staff had experimented with sulphur, chlorine and bromine fumes. They reported on sulphur gas: "This gas thus produced acts as an irritant on the lungs and eyes, and thence it is adapted to render the enemy incapable of resistance, but is not poisonous, and in that way its use in war is not contrary to international right." They had in view Article 23 of the rules of conducting hostilities promulgated by the second Hague Conference to which they had subscribed, which specifically prohibits "the use of poisons and poisonous arms" and "the use of arms, projectiles and material destined to produce useless suffering." The Germans could have used sulphur gas just as well as chlorine gas, but sulphur was not poisonous, and would not kill; chlorine and bromine would.

We had just learned that they were using red phosphorus in their shells, and that any particle of that chemical that got into a wound would set up gangrene from which hundreds of soldiers died in terrible agony. We had surmised that they were in the habit of dipping their rifle bullets in red phosphorus solution because where they struck the men's clothing they invariably started even the wool clothing burning. That was the case at St. Julien Wood where, according to the stories brought back by the men, they had foully crucified a sergeant belonging to our brigade on a barn door. He belonged to our bombing section.

The sun was shining a red rim on the horizon in the east. The sickly green clouds of the gas appeared denser in some places than others. The wind was just right for the infernal curtain that gradually drew over the trenches. The thickest pall was blown against the right of our line between McGregor's company and the left of the 8th Battalion, where there was an open space protected only by a small trench and barbed wire. Of those on our right hardly a man was left to tell the tale.