On the 8th of September, while on the march, Dick Starkley was gazetted a lieutenant of Canadian Infantry. Mr. Smith found his third star in the same gazette, and Dick took the platoon. Henry visited the battalion a few days later and presented to the new lieutenant an old uniform that would do very well until the London tailors were given a chance. Dick was a proud soldier that day; and an opportunity of showing his new dignity to the enemy soon occurred. That opportunity was the famous battle of Courcelette.
From one o'clock of the afternoon of September 14 until four o'clock the next morning our heavy guns and howitzers belabored with high explosive shells the fortified sugar refinery and its strong trenches and the village of Courcelette beyond. Then for an hour the big guns were silent. The battalions of the Fourth and Sixth Brigades waited in their jumping-off trenches before Pozières. The Fifth Brigade, of which the 26th Battalion was a unit, rested in reserve.
Dawn broke with a clear sky and promise of sunshine and a frosty tingle in the air. At six o'clock the eighteen-pounder guns of nine brigades of artillery, smashing into sudden activity, laid a dense barrage on the nearest rim of the German positions. Four minutes later the barrage lifted and jumped forward one hundred yards, and the infantry climbed out of their trenches and followed it into the first German trench. The fight was on in earnest, and in shell holes, in corners of trenches and against improvised barricades many great feats of arms were dared and achieved. A tank led the infantry against the strongly fortified ruins of the refinery and toppled down everything in its path.
Lieut. Dick Starkley and his friends gave ear all morning to the din of battle, wished themselves farther forward in the middle of it and wondered whether the brigades in front would leave anything for them to do on the morrow. Messages of success came back to them from time to time. By eight o'clock, after two hours of fighting, the Canadians had taken the formidable trenches, the sugar refinery, a fortified sunken road and hundreds of prisoners. The way was open to Courcelette.
"If they don't slow up—if they don't quit altogether this very minute—they'll be crowding right in to Courcelette and doing us out of a job!" complained Sergt. Hiram Sill. "That's our job, Courcelette is—our job for to-morrow. They've done what they set out to do, and if they go ahead now and try something they haven't planned for, well, they'll maybe bite off more than they can chew. The psychology of it will be all wrong; their minds aren't made up to that idea."
"I guess the idee ain't the hull thing," remarked a middle-aged corporal. "Many a good job has been done kind of unexpectedly in this war. I reckon this here psychology didn't have much to do with your D. C. M."
"That's where you're dead wrong, Henry," said Hiram. "I knew I'd get a D. C. M. all along, from the first minute I ever set foot in a trench. My mind and my spirit were all made up for it. I knew I'd get a D. C. M. just as sure as I know now that I'll get a bar to it—if I don't go west first."
Dick, who had joined the group, laughed and smote Hiram on the shoulder.
"You're dead right!" he exclaimed. "Old Psychology, you're a wonder of the age! Be careful what you make up your heart and soul and mind to next or you'll find yourself in command of the division."
"What do you mean, lieutenant?" asked Sill.