During the rest of that battle we lived in the reserve trenches, bombarded day and night. The battle lasted twenty-one days. When it was over they called a roll of our regiment. There were 500 of us when we left Montreal. As the commander called the roll, name after name was met with no response. At Ypres 480 out of 500 of us were left dead on the field. And in reality our loss had been greater than that, for our 500 had been thinned out in other actions and filled with a full roster again. Twenty of us out of 500 survived at Ypres.
VIII—FIGHTING AGAINST BARBARISM
We fought madly at St. Jean, after Ypres, and retreated. We rested eight days at Bailleul, marched through Steevwerck and rested eight more days there; we also rested at Estaires for eight days, then through Vieille Chapelle, and then had another eight days' rest. We reached Lacouture at night and went into battle again at Richebourg.
We arrived there in May, 1915. Richebourg is in France, eight miles from the Belgian border, on the English front. A very small agricultural village we found it, coming to it after a hard twelve-hour hike from Bailleul. We got into the Richebourg trenches in the evening.
I found myself in a German trench, captured by the British. Five hours before the battle had raged, and the place was still full of wounded and dead, both German and British. Trench by trench we worked our way into the British front line. We had been reinforced by the Twelfth Battalion of reserves, which was made up of French Canadians and Englishmen; thus our decimated regiment was swelled to 365 men.
The battle was going on. Relieving the front line proved a dangerous task. We had to proceed cautiously to avoid bullets, and it took us three hours to reach the front line, which we did at midnight. Ten of our men were killed by shrapnel or stray bullets on the way.
Then came the report from our left that the Germans were trying to counterattack. Our officers called for volunteers for a bomb and hand grenade throwing party. We were gone twenty minutes, fifteen of us in all; three of us were wounded, and Carrier of Montreal was killed. We were able to report on our return that we had done effective work. After that things quieted down and gave us a breathing spell.
The next morning we were ordered to take the German first-line trenches. Our cannon began to clear the way first at 2 o'clock in the morning. The famous French 75—the French 75 which is always helping the English at difficult times—blasted out the pathway over which we were to charge. We had thirty-two of these 75s—four guns to each of the eight batteries. When worked hard, these guns can fire twenty shots a minute.
We were all Catholics. At 5:30 o'clock we began to say our prayers, and soon after we were charging with fixed bayonets. We had no great difficulty in taking two lines of trenches. But when we reached the third, they rallied and drove us out. There the Germans made a counterattack, raking our flanks with their machine guns as soon as we reached their third trench. They killed 75 of us, wounded over 100, and took 20 prisoners. We were obliged to leave our wounded in their trench with the dead.
I lay until night in the German second-line trench, among the dead and wounded. There was, of course, no communication and we could not clear the place we had taken or get medical help for the men who writhed in agony all around us. A company of Highlanders from the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Battalions came to our relief at night. The Highlanders and my company were given orders to capture an orchard on our left. Through this orchard ran the German trench. German snipers were concealed in the old apple trees, and the place seemed one huge shrapnel, which burst and never ceased bursting. Three-quarters of our men were killed. And I, as usual, was among the unwounded survivors.