With our army in Flanders

by Valentine Williams

The afternoon of April 22 was drawing to a close, and a fresh breeze was blowing from the north-east, when the German Supreme Command decided that the moment had arrived for the perpetration of the crime that will brand the German Army with infamy until the end of time. Our line about Ypres ran, more or less as the first great German thrust for Calais had left it in November, in a wide semicircle about Ypres. The French were on our left on the east bank of the Yser Canal, along a line running eastward through Langemarck to the point where our line began. Here the Canadian Division was in the trenches which went through Kersselaere along the Gravenstafel ridge to a point adjacent to the cross-roads at Broodseinde, where the 28th Division under General Bulfin held the line as far as the outer, the eastern, edge of the Polygon Wood. Here the 27th Division under General Snow took over the line which bent back westward down to where the 5th Division was in position about Hill 60.

This, then, was the famous salient of Ypres. It was in the northern part that the Germans launched their first gas attack, and one can imagine with what eager expectation their gas engineers throughout that fine April day fingered the taps of the cylinders embedded in front of their trenches, where our outlook men had observed them working for several weeks before. We have never heard the French version of what happened after 5.15 on the evening of April 22, when the fatal greenish-yellow cloud, the significance of which no man could fathom at that time, rising to about man’s height, began to roll sluggishly forward from the white and blue sandbags marking the German line. We only know that our artillery observation officers in their different coigns of vantage in this region saw a mysterious greenish haze hovering over the French lines, and that presently down all the roads leading from the canal to Ypres and Vlamertinghe and Poperinghe a stream of French infantry and Turcos appeared, most of them with terror in their faces, with streaming eyes and gasping breath, in the grip of a horror they feared because they did not understand it.

It was a grim and awful ordeal to be the first to endure a method of warfare so diabolical in its conception, so fiendish in its effects, that its equal has hardly been encountered in all the blood-stained history of man. The whole British Army applauded the noble words in which its Commander-in-Chief alluded to the conduct of the French on that occasion. In his despatch of June 15 Sir John French said, referring to the gas attack on the French: “I wish particularly to repudiate any idea of attaching the least blame to the French Division for this unfortunate incident. After all the examples our gallant Allies have shown of dogged and tenacious courage in the many trying situations in which they have been placed throughout the course of this campaign, it is quite superfluous for me to dwell on this aspect of the incident, and I would only express the firm conviction that, if any troops in the world had been able to hold their trenches in the face of such a treacherous and altogether unexpected onslaught, the French Division would have stood firm.” We know now that many of our brave Allies, both officers and men, stayed and died at their posts, victims of slow asphyxiation. You may find the graves of many of them to-day, among other places by the canal bank, around Ypres, and in a little burial-ground close to a road leading out of Poperinghe.

Fortunately, the healthy respect the Germans had for their new ally delayed their advance, and enabled the news of the overwhelming of the right of the Allied line to reach General Headquarters, where it was received with amazement. Prompt measures were taken, for it was at once recognized that the Canadian left was dangerously exposed.

The fact that the Germans had, on April 20, started bombarding Ypres with 17-inch shells had aroused the suspicions of General Bulfin, commanding the 28th Division, which was on the right of the Canadians. Knowing that most of the practicable roads from west to east led through Ypres, he very wisely ordered everything to come east of the city, in anticipation of some German move which at that time he was unable to fathom. The most urgent need of the moment, after the retirement of the French, was to fill the gap left in the line between the French who had escaped the poisoned gas and were still in their old positions and the Canadian left. Colonel Geddes of the Buffs was accordingly put in command of four battalions in reserve east of Ypres—the Buffs, the Middlesex, the 5th King’s Own, and the Yorks and Lancaster—and two Canadian battalions in billets at Wieltje, and sent up to stop the gap. At the same time the 13th Brigade, which had just emerged exhausted from the fighting at Hill 60, was rushed up from its rest-billets to support the French and the Canadians along the Pilckem Road.

It was a critical night for the Canadians. The Germans, realizing at last that the French trenches opposite their gas-cylinders were unoccupied, and that their experiment had succeeded beyond their widest hopes, had advanced, and were now threatening the Canadian flank. Advancing with the utmost gallantry, Geddes’s strange conglomeration of British and Canadian troops had succeeded in capturing by assault a small wood west of the village of St. Julien, in which four 4·7 guns—the 2nd London Heavy Battery—lent to the French some time before, had fallen into German hands. The 10th Canadian Regiment and the Canadian Highlanders made a most spectacular and splendid charge through the wood that night, routing the Germans and recapturing the guns. Unfortunately, the “heavies” could not be brought away, so the breech-blocks were removed and the guns otherwise rendered useless.

That night the Canadians bent back their left flank against the attack they knew could not be long delayed. Indeed, reports showed the Germans to be busy outside their trenches. The Canadians dug themselves in along their new line whilst the dawn came creeping up heralding the day that was to win immortal glory for the Maple Leaf. They knew that they must hold out against the arrival of the British troops which were coming to reinforce them, and of the French reinforcements which were hastening up to try and regain what had been lost.

It was at 4 a.m. that the gas was released. It came on in its sluggish rolling billows against the Canadians lined up behind their sandbags on the Gravenstafel ridge from a distance calculated by the Winnipeg Rifles (8th Canadian Battalion) to be about 200 yards. They had time to load and discharge two charges of their Ross rifles before the gas was on them, rolling over the parapet, creeping in and out of the sandbags and eddying into the dug-outs. Urgent messages were telephoned back to the batteries as the Germans were seen assembling in front of their main trench. The enemy waited ten minutes or so before attacking, and when they did come on were driven back by our guns and the rifles of the men who were still able to stand upright.

For the Canadians stood fast. As long as the Empire endures the story of their fight shall live. Stifled like wasps in a nest, battered incessantly by a terrific bombardment which increased in intensity as the day wore on, they held out grimly. The Highlanders in the wood west of St. Julien, badly enfiladed, as the flank was bent back here, got the full blast of the vapours, but they would not fall back. At one place where part of one battalion was forced to evacuate their trench, the survivors made an extraordinarily plucky attempt to reoccupy it in the face of a withering fire.

The Canadian left—the 3rd Canadian Brigade—was sorely pressed. Once the brigade sent word to its sister brigade—the 2nd Canadian Brigade—on its right that the Germans were advancing unchecked on its trenches. Two platoons were despatched as reinforcements, and some of the Northumberland Fusiliers under Lieutenant Hardy. One of this officer’s reports was so characteristic of the circumstances of this epic fight and of the spirit in which our men went through with it that I think it is worth quoting textually. Here it is: