Every man of the fighting forces of the First Battalion was engaged in this action, and much valuable assistance during consolidation and counter-attack was rendered by the Company of the Fourth Battalion sent up to support. For over thirty hours after the assault the regiment held on, heavy fog rendering relief in the early hours of the 24th a difficult undertaking, all the more so in view of the intense and long-continued barrage opened by the enemy during the hours of relief. In fact, during the whole tour of the First Canadian Battalion in the Courcelette sector, the regiment was subjected to intense and incessant fire.
When the remainder of the First Battalion marched out to rest, with Hun helmets and other souvenirs hanging to their kits, they marched with the pride of men who knew they had done their bit.
The Corps Commander rode over to congratulate the Commanding Officer and the regiment, and such terms were used from the Highest Command downwards that the “Old First” knows and is proud of the fact, that another laurel has been added to the wreaths of the battalion, the brigade, the division, and the Canadian Army.
We have but one sorrow, one deep regret, and that is for Our Heroic Dead.
CARNAGE
There is a little valley somewhere among the rolling hills of the Somme district wherein the sun never shines. It is a tiny little valley, once part of a not unattractive landscape, now a place of horror.
Half a dozen skeletons of trees, rotting and torn, fringe the southern bank, and the remnants of a sunken road curve beneath the swelling hill that shields the valley from the sun. Flowers may have grown there once, children may have played under the then pleasant green of the trees; one can even picture some dark-eyed, black-haired maid of Picardy, sallying forth from the little hamlet not far off with her milking-stool and pail, to milk the family cow in the cool shade of the trees and the steep above.
But that was long ago—at least, it seems as though it must have been long ago—for to-day the place is a shambles, a valley of Death. Those who speak of the glory of war, of the wonderful dashing charges, the inspiring mighty roar of cannon—let them come to this spot and look on this one small corner of a great battle-field. Within plain view are villages that will have a place in history—piles of broken brick and crushed mortar that bear silent, eloquent testimony to the Kultur of the twentieth century. Round about the land is just a series of tiny craters, fitted more closely together than the scars on the face of a man who has survived a severe attack of small-pox; and here and there, scattered, still lie the dead. No blade of grass dare raise its sheath above ground, for the land is sown with steel and iron and lead, and the wreckage and wrack and ruin of the most bitter strife.
Even those who have seen such things for many months past pause involuntarily when they reach this valley of the shadow. It is a revelation of desolation—the inner temple of death. In that little space, perhaps three hundred feet long and a bare forty wide, lie the bodies of nearly a hundred men, friend and foe, whose souls have gone on to the happy hunting ground amid circumstances of which no tongue could give a fitting account, no pen a fitting description.
Once a German stronghold, this place passed into our hands but a short while since. Two guns were tucked away in under the hill, and the infantry, suddenly ejected from their forward position, fell back on them, and taking advantage of a pause strengthened their position, and brought up reinforcements. Thereupon our guns concentrated on them with fearful results, although when the infantry swept forward, there were still enough men in the deep, half-filled in trench to put up a desperate resistance.