“At first they fired too high, and our losses were small. Then some of our men began to drop, and the whole front line seemed to melt away, only to be instantly closed up again. Cheering and yelling, we jumped over the bodies of the wounded and tore on. Of the Germans with the machine-guns not one escaped, but those inside the wood stood up to us in fine style.
“The struggle became a dreadful hand-to-hand conflict; we fought in clumps and batches, and the living struggled over the bodies of the dead and dying. At the height of the conflict, while we were steadily driving the Germans before us, the moon burst out. The clashing bayonets flashed like quicksilver, and faces were lit up as if by limelight.
“Sweeping on, we came upon lines of trenches, which had been hastily made and could not be well defended. All who held out were bayoneted; those who gave in were sent to the rear.”
The officer spoke modestly as all British heroes do; but no words could convey a full idea of the desperate character of the fighting on that moonlight night. The Canadians knew perfectly well what depended upon them in that frantic struggle round about the poor battered town of Ypres; and they nobly performed the duty laid upon them.
Remember that these men were not fighting, directly at least, for the safety of their own homes, which were thousands of miles away in peaceful Canada; nor for their wives and children, mothers, or sweethearts, who had sent them out so bravely from their homes in the western land. They might have stayed at home, and no one would have had any right to call them slackers or shirkers.
But they did not stay at home. The “Old Grey Mother” of them all was in danger—the Britain to whom it was their pride to belong. So they came racing across the seas as quick as steam could bring them; and after some months of training in the Old Country, they went out to fight and win and die.
THE CANADIAN SPIRIT
When the Canadian troops arrived at the Western Front Sir John French wrote of them, “The soldierly bearing and the steadiness with which the men stay in the ranks on a bleak, cold, and snowy day are most remarkable.” Other leaders spoke of their high spirits and love of fun; others again of their cleverness in finding out new ways of doing things, and, later, of tricking the enemy.
The men from overseas soon became comrades with the Britons from the Motherland. “The British Tommy,” wrote a young Canadian, “is splendid. He is alive to his fingertips. He is full of devices to deceive the enemy; he knows all kinds of tricks; he hasn’t a mean streak in him, and he’s a first-class fighting man. He uses his brains. It has been a revelation to me to find him as he really is.”