[Illustration: Map: Ypres and the surroundings.]
THE TOWN OF YPRES IS FULL OF MEMORIES FOR THE CANADIANS
It is safe to say that the youngest private in the rank, as he set his teeth for the advance, knew the task in front of him, and the youngest subaltern knew all that rested upon its success. It did not seem that any human being could live in the shower of shot and shell which began to play upon the advancing troops. They suffered terrible casualties. For a short time every other man seemed to fall, but the attack was pressed ever closer and closer.
The Fourth Canadian battalion at one moment came under a particularly withering fire. For a moment—not more—it wavered. Its most gallant commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Burchill, carrying, after an old fashion, a light cane, coolly and cheerfully rallied his men and, at the very moment when his example had infected them, fell dead at the head of his battalion. With a hoarse cry of anger they sprang forward (for, indeed they loved him), as if to avenge his death. The astonishing attack which followed—pushed home in the face of direct frontal fire made in broad daylight by battalions whose names should live forever in the memories of soldiers—was carried to the front line of the German trenches. After a hand-to-hand struggle the last German who resisted was bayoneted, and the trench was won.
The measure of this success may be taken when it is pointed out that this trench represented in the German advance the apex in the breach which the enemy had made in the original line of the Allies, and that it was two and a half miles south of that line. This charge, made by men who looked death indifferently in the face (for no man who took part in it could think that he was likely to live) saved, and that was much, the Canadian left. But it did more. Up to the point where the assailants conquered, or died, it secured and maintained during the most critical moment of all the integrity of the allied line. For the trench was not only taken, it was held thereafter against all comers, and in the teeth of every conceivable projectile, until the night of Sunday, the 25th, when all that remained of the war-broken but victorious battalion was relieved by fresh troops.
CHAPTER XXIX
ZEPPELIN RAIDS ON FRANCE AND ENGLAND
The idea of warfare in the air has been a dream of romancers from a period long before Jules Verne. Indeed, balloons were used for observation purposes in the eighteenth century by the French armies. The crude balloon of that period, in a more developed form, was used in the Franco-Prussian War, and during the siege of Paris by its assistance communication was kept up between Paris and the outside world. Realizing its possibilities inventors had been trying to develop a balloon which could be propelled against the wind and so guided that explosives could be dropped upon a hostile army. Partially successful dirigible balloons have been occasionally exhibited for a number of years.
The idea of such a balloon took a strong hold upon the imagination of the German army staff long before the Great War, and Count Ferdinand Zeppelin gave the best years of his life to its development. From the beginning he met with great difficulties. His first ships proved mechanical failures, and after these difficulties were overcome he met with a series of accidents which almost put an end to his efforts. By popular subscription, and by government support, he was able to continue, and when the war began Germany had thirty-five dirigible balloons of the Zeppelin and other types, many of them as much as 490 feet long.
The Zeppelin balloon, called the Zeppelin from the name of its inventor, was practically a vast ship, capable of carrying a load of about fifteen thousand pounds. It would carry a crew of twenty men or more, fuel for the engines, provisions, a wireless installation, and armament with ammunition. For a journey of twenty hours such a vessel would need at least seven thousand pounds of fuel. It would probably be able to carry about two tons of explosives. These Zeppelins could travel great distances. Before the war one of them flew from Lake Constance to Berlin, a continuous flight of about one thousand miles, in thirty-one hours.
These great aerial warships were given a thorough trial by the Germans. They disliked to admit that they had made a costly mistake in adding them to their armament. It soon turned out, however, that the Zeppelins were practically useless in battle. Whatever they could do, either for scouting purposes or in dropping explosives behind the enemy's lines, could be better done by the airplane. The French and the English, who before the war had decided that the airplane was the more important weapon, were right. But the Germans did not give up their costly toy so easily, and they determined to use it in the bombardment of cities and districts situated far away from the German line, in dropping bombs, not upon fortifications, or armed camps where they might meet with resistance, but upon peaceful non-belligerents in the streets of great unfortified cities.