 FORWARD The greater part of A Surgeon in Arms was written before the United States entered the war in April 1917. Therefore the Americans are not mentioned in many paragraphs in which the soldiers of the other allies are spoken of. The Canadian soldiers on the Western Front have won undying fame for their marvelous feats in many actions from the First Battle of Ypres in April 1915 to Vimy Ridge in April 1917. As soldiers they take a place second to none, and I believe the American soldiers will in the lines show the same courage, dash, and initiative, and win the same fighting reputation and honors as the Canadians, for do not Americans and Canadians inherit the same blood, literature, history, and traditions? Do they not both live in the same wide spaces, speak the same mother tongue, aspire to the same ideals, and enjoy the same free institutions? END FORWARD Chapter 1 and 2 of A Surgeon in Arms by Robert James Mannion Chapter 1 Life in the Trenches Life out there is so strange, so unique, so full of hardship and danger, and yet so intensely interesting that it seems like another world. It is a different life from any other that is to be found in our world today, and yet the most extraordinary occurrences take place and are accepted as a matter of course. I am sitting in a dugout near Franois. Heavy shelling by the enemy is taking place outside, making life in the pitch-dark trenches rather precarious. A number of soldiers of different battalions on this front are going to and fro in the trenches outside. The shelling gets a bit worse, so some of them crawl down into the entrance of my dugout to take a few minutes rest in its semi-protection. They cannot see each other in the blackness, but with that spirit of camaraderie so common out there, two of the men sitting next to each other begin to chat. After exchanging the numbers of their battalions, which happened to be both Canadian and in the same brigade, one says, But you're not a Johnny Canuck, you talk like an Englishman. Oh, that may be, I was born in England, but I am a Canadian. I've been out there for seventeen years. The other returned, oh, little proudly. Indeed, I was in Canada only three years. Where'd you come from in old England? Fabbisham, Kent? Fabbisham? Well, I'm blowed, that's my home. What the hell's your name? Reggie Roberts? Why, blimey, I'm your brother Bill. Affectionate greeting followed, then explanations. The elder brother had gone out to Alberta seventeen years before, while the younger was still in school. Correspondence had stopped, as it often does with men. Fourteen years later the other boy went out to Ontario. When the war broke out, they both enlisted, but in different regiments, and they met after seventeen years' separation in the dark entrance to my dugout. On the front of our division an order came through telling us that information was reaching the enemy that should not reach him. For this reason all units were ordered to keep a sharp look out for spies since we feared that some English-speaking Germans were visiting our lines. In our battalion, at that time, was a very good and careful officer, Lieutenant Weston. Rather strangely, one of the men of his platoon was a Corporal Easton. Shortly after the above order had come forth, Lieutenant Weston was sent out on a reconnoitering expedition by night into no man's land. He took as his companion Corporal Easton. Over the parapet they crept between flares and proceeded to crawl cautiously about among the barbed wire entanglements, ghosts of bygone sins, and German enemies. At each flare, sent up by us or the enemy, splitting the thick darkness like a flash of lightning, they pushed their faces into the mud and lay perfectly still in order to avoid becoming the target of a German sniper or even possibly of some over-nervous Tommy. If there is any place in this war where Napoleon's dictum that a soldier travels on his stomach is lived up to in a literal and superlative degree, it is in no man's land by night. Their reconnaissance had lasted some two hours when they started to return to what they thought was their own battalion front. But as sometimes happens they had lost their bearings. While they were correct as to the direction toward the Canadian lines in general, they were really crawling to the firing line of one of the brigades to our right. Suddenly Weston, who was leading, found his chest pressed against the sharp point of a bayonet. He heard a voice hissing, who goes there? Two Canadians, he whispered in reply. All right, crawl in here and no funny tricks or we'll fill you up full of lead. At the point of the bayonet he and his Corporal crawled over the parapet. They found themselves in the enlarged end of a sap that was being used as a listening post. In the darkness they could dimly see that they were surrounded by soldiers with fixed bayonets. But your name hiss the voice, for out there no one is anxious to attract a hand grenade from the enemy on the other side of the line. Lieutenant Weston, and yours to the Corporal, Corporal Easton. Weston, Easton, that's too damn thin. Now you fellows march ahead of us to headquarters and if you so much as turn your head we'll put so many holes to you, you'll look like a sieve. Quick march! And they plowed through the deep mud of the trenches till they were well back, then they came out and proceeded overland to HQ, headquarters. Here, after a few sharp questions, a little telephoning and some hearty laughter, they were given a runner to show them the shortest route back to their own battalion. Trench warfare, as it has been carried on during this great war, is different from the warfare of the past. Here we had, and have at the time of writing, on the western front alone, a fighting line 500 miles long with millions of soldiers of the allies occupying trenches, dugouts, huts, tents, and billets on one side of the line and millions of the enemy in the same position on the other. For months at a time there is no move in either direction. Trenches are merely long irregular ditches, usually, though not always, deep enough to hide a man from the enemy. Occasionally they are so shallow that the soldier must travel on his stomach, during which time any part of his anatomy, which has too prominent a curve, may be exposed to the fire of the enemy. Of course, this all depends on the architectural configuration of the traveler. Front trenches far in the rear, they are always zigzag, being no more than 10 to 20 feet in a straight line, to prevent any shells doing too much damage. The front trench is called the firing line, the next one 50 yards or so behind, but running parallel is a support trench, and other support trenches exist back to about a thousand yards. Communicating trenches run from front to rear, crossing the support trenches. Here and there a communicating trench runs right back out of the danger zone, and these long trenches are at times divided into in trenches and out trenches. Shorter communicating trenches run from support to firing lines. These different trenches give the ground from above the appearance of an irregular checkerboard. The front wall of the trench is called the parapet, and the rear wall, the paradox. Above the trenches, on the intervening ground, is overland. In the bottom of the trenches, when the water has not washed them away, are trench mats or small rough boardwalks. Sometimes the mud or sand walls of the trench are supported by revetments of wire or wood. No man's land is the area between the firing lines of the opponents. It is a barren area of shell holes, barbed wire, and desolation, and may be from 40 yards to 300 or more yards wide. Commonly on standing fronts, its width is about 100 yards. Saps are trenches extending out into no man's land and used for observation purposes or for listening posts. They may end in craters or large cavities in the ground made by the explosion of mines. Dugouts are cavities off from the trenches, connecting with them by narrow passages. The dugout proper is a cavity, small or large, used for living in and for protection from shellfire. They may be superficial, having only two or three feet of sandbags, more properly, bags of sand, for a roof, or they may have a roof 10 to 40 feet in thickness, but the term is often used carelessly for any kind of shelter at the front. At dusk and dawn the men usually stand too, that is, they stand, rifle and hand, in the trenches ready to repel any attack of the enemy. During the dark hours the men take part in working parties or fatigues to bring in water, clean the mud from the trenches, carry rations or ammunition, and dig holes or dumps in which munitions, flares, or equipment are stored. Fatigues are rather disliked by the men, for they are laborious and just as dangerous as other work in the lines. In speaking to each other and often in official communications, abbreviations are much employed among officers and men. For example OC, or CO, is used to signify the officer commanding in a unit, whether it be the Lieutenant Colonel in charge of a battalion or the Major Captain or Lieutenant in command of a company. The MO, or the DOC, is commonly the shortened form for the medical officer, and HQ signifies headquarters and may apply to company battalion, brigade, divisional, corps, or army headquarters, any of which would generally speaking be specified unless the conversation or communication made it plain which was met. After big advances there are varying periods during which trench life is more or less abandoned for open warfare. After an advance the consolidation of the land taken consists of again digging trenches and dugouts, preparing machine gun emplacements, bringing up the artillery, and establishing communications. During this transitory period the losses are often heavy because of the poor protection afforded the men and the fact that the enemy is well acquainted with the ground which he has abandoned willingly or unwillingly. End of chapter 1 Chapter 2 Over the Top When a man has gone over the top of a frontline trench in an attack on the enemy he has reached the stage in his career as a soldier at which the title veteran may honorably be applied to him. For to climb out of your burrow where you have been living like an earthworm into God's clear daylight in plain view of enemy snipers, machine gunners, and artillerymen, and under the same conditions to start across no man's land toward the Hun in his well protected and fortified trenches is indeed to earn that distinction. Many there are who have courted death in this form again and again and got away with it, but it is a good deal like trying your luck at Rouge Noir in the casino at Monte Carlo. The odds are against you and if you keep at it long enough you are almost mathematically certain to lose out in the end. The boys know this as well as you and I. In spite of that knowledge over the top they go again and again by day and by night with a smile on their lips, blood in their eyes, and joy in their hearts at the thought of revenging themselves upon the despicable Hun for his breaking of all the laws of civilization, for his utter disregard of the principle that between nation and nation as between man and man lives the one great law of right. Attacks in which the men go over the top are of various kinds and on different scales. The commonest are simple raids in which a small sector of enemy lines is this object. By them we endeavor to obtain prisoners for purposes of identification of the troops opposing us while at the same time we depress the morale of the enemy. Then there are the immense attacks called pushes in which we mean to push back the enemy, take possession of his lines, consolidate and hold them, killing, taking prisoners, and putting order to combat as many as we can in the process. These pushes are always on a greater scale and require thorough organization and preparation to be successful. If they should fail our last condition is worse than our first. We have not only wasted all our immense preparations but we have lowered the spirits of our own men and raised and encouraged the fighting spirit of the enemy. The man who was sitting comfortably in his library five or six thousand miles from the scene of battle notes on the map on his wall that it is only five inches from the firing lines of the allies to the Rhine. He may decide that it should be an easy matter to bring up a few million troops, break through the enemy lines, push a million men through the gap, cut the communications of the opposing forces, hurl the enemy back into the Rhine, and make him sue for peace. On paper and with the aid of a vivid imagination this may look easy. In reality the preparations for a great advance are enormous. For weeks before the push, even for months, the staffs of battalion, brigade, division, corps, and army are planning it. Dummy trenches are laid out from aerial photographs taken by aviators, and dummy advances are practiced with all the details as in real advances. Our information must be so complete that we know even where certain dugouts are in the enemy lines and who occupies them. This knowledge comes from prisoners and deserters. Raids are put on to show what troops are opposing us by the identification of prisoners. Medical arrangements have to be completed so as to handle the hundreds or thousands of casualties that must occur. Immense guns must be brought up and millions of shells must be piled along the roads, and stored in dumps ready for use during battle. Water arrangements have to be made to supply pure water to the troops when they cross into enemy territory, for the enemy may have destroyed or poisoned the water supplies as they retired. Extra food rations and equipment must be supplied to the men. Places of confinement for the hope for prisoners must be built, and finally thousands of extra troops must be brought up and trained for the attack. The above are only a few of the preparations that must be made, for the details are multitudinous. The most difficult thing is that these preparations must be carried out so far as possible without the enemy's knowledge, for he also has his airplane scouts taking photographs and looking about for information, his observation balloons and his spies, his raids, and his prisoners. It is even possible that we might have a deserter who betrayed us to him, though one feels that this must be exceedingly rare. If the armchair critic has read the above, he will perhaps realize a little more vividly than he has done before how difficult advances are and why it is more easy to talk of getting the enemy on the run than to actually do it. Once he has started to retreat and you to advance your difficulties multiply and go on increasing in direct proportion to the distance that you get from your base of supplies. Your munitions, food, and water must be transported from the rear over strange roads pulverized by shell fire, while your enemy is backing into greater supplies hourly. One of the most difficult propositions is to keep the different parts of your immense organization in communication with battalion brigade and divisional headquarters. Many different methods are used. Perhaps the most reliable is by runner or courier on foot. The runner has an arduous, dangerous, and often thankless task which he performs as a rule patiently, bravely, and tirelessly. The telephone, telegraph, and power buzzer, the latter being sometimes used without wires, at a distance as great as 4,000 yards, are commonly employed, though they have many disadvantages. The first of these is the difficulty in installing them in the face of heavy shelling and counter attacks by the enemy. Secondly, they are likely to be put out of commission, their wires being destroyed by shells. Finally, their messages are often picked up through the earth by your opponents with some apparatus invented for the purpose. There are the semaphores and flashlight methods of signaling and signaling by flares, all naturally very limited in variety of use, the latter particularly so. But flares are of great service when a hurried artillery retaliation is desired. SOS flares then being set up. The wireless apparatus on airplanes and the throwing of flares by aviators are used also to good account. But there are times when all these different methods are found wanting. Through force of circumstance, a battalion or company may be completely isolated, and then it is that the last and least employed method that of carrier pigeons is resorted to. In each battalion are a couple or more specially trained carrier pigeons, and to speak of the OC pigeons is a standing joke. The pigeons are rarely employed. It may be almost forgotten that they are with the unit, as was practically the case of one battalion at the Somme of which the following story is told. The commanding officer had waited in vain for hours for some message as to the success or failure of a show one company was putting on. He was patiently striding up and down when a poor little carrier pigeon fluttered into his presence. He hurriedly caught it and untied from its leg the following message. I am pally well fed up carrying this damned bird about. You take it for a while. After all this preparatory stage is completed when transport, artillery preparation, communication, maps, training, dummy advances, extra rations, water, medical supplies, and equipment are in order, the next move is to get all troops taking part in the advance into the most advantageous position unknown to the Germans. The men are well fed, given extra water bottles, iron rations are in their kits, that is, bully beef and biscuit. They are equipped only in fighting dress. By night they are marched into the trenches from which they are to go over the top, and after a few hours of rest, broken by shell fire, the zero hour or hour of attack arrives. Just before the great advance in which the Canadians took Vimy Ridge, that hill consecrated by the graves of thousands of French, British, and Canadian soldiers, our brigade had made all these arrangements. We were to march into the line on Easter Saturday and go over the top the following morning at daybreak. But at the last moment we were delayed by a brigade order, due to information obtained from a German deserter, information that said that the Huns knew that we were to attack on Easter Sunday. While sitting in my tent I was visited by officers on various missions, some to get dressings to carry in their pocket, dressings that they neglected to getting till the very last moment, others to tell me that such and such a man was afflicted with aggrievous malady, cold feet, and if he should visit me on pretension of illness to bear this fact in mind, and again others with no object but a pleasant word. Among those who always had a humorous word and a smile, and whose honest eyes always looked at one fearlessly through his gold-rimmed spectacles, was Lieutenant Henderson, old pop, as the younger officers always called him. After his usual courteous and kindly greeting, we joked about the possibility, or rather the probability, of some of us not coming back from the great advance. No doubt he voiced the opinion of most of us when he said with a hearty laugh, you know, doc, the main objection I have to death is that it is so damned permanent. The following day old pop was no more. His jolly laugh and his voice with its pleasant burr were to be heard no longer in our ranks. He had met death while bravely leading his men across no man's land, like the gallant Scotch gentleman that he was. Something which struck me then and which still impresses me as extraordinary in looking back at it was the buoyant, cheerful, optimistic spirit in which our army of citizen soldiers looked forward to the day when we were to take part in one of the greatest battles in history. We knew it was to be a fearful and a magnificent trial of strength out of which many of us would never return to the people and the lands we loved. And yet, all awaited it with a gay, hopeful, undaunted optimism, asking not but the opportunity and participating nothing but victory. It is unbelievable that the blind obedience of a militaristic Kaiserism can ever subdue a soldiery who so freely offered their all on the altar of liberty. End of chapter two Chapters three and four of A Surgeon in Arms by Robert James Mannion. The slipper box recording is in the public domain. Chapter three, Overland. The normal position of man on the earth is on its surface. Generally speaking, when he is under the surface he is in his wine cellar, or he is dead. But at the front all this is altered. Both the enemy and ourselves have reverted to the cave age, for if we wish safety in the lines, comparative safely that is, we pass our time in caves or cellars, dugouts, or trenches. Not that living underground would be taken as a matter of choice in the piping times of peace, for the mud and dirt of the trenches and dugouts cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be said to be comfortable or pleasant. The fact that your only chance against a hidden enemy is also to hide makes your desires subservient to necessity. In fact, both the enemy and ourselves are continually burrowing deeper and deeper in each other's direction. At the end of the burrow, or tunnel, we place charges of dynamite to blow each other out into the open. The fear that your enemy may succeed in doing it to you first, and that some fine day you may awaken to find yourself sailing about in the heavens with no support but the explosion which sent you there, makes many a man on a dark night hear imaginary tapings, causing him to report that he fears the enemy are mining underneath us. More than once out of the pitch darkness has come into my dugout some lonely sentry to tell me that he has heard a mysterious hammering underfoot, and only when we had located the real cause as something other than he thought did his, and perhaps our, nervousness disappear. On one occasion a non-commissioned officer came hurrying into the HQ dugout of a certain Canadian battalion. With hair standing on end he reported that an auger had actually come through the bottom of the trench in which he had been standing. The Colonel insisted on investigating this himself, and found that a mole had aborted his way through the ground. These fears may have an unconscious effect in making everyone wish to get out of the semi-darkness of the trenches into the bright sunlight which dispels clammy feelings and fears as if they were mists of the morning. But the real reason for traveling overland is that at all ages and in every climb the forbidden or dangerous has its attractions. Thus it is that out there both officers and men, contrary to orders and upon the flimsiest of pretexts, climb out of the trenches and in more or less plain view of enemy snipers or observation posts, walk again like ordinary human beings on the face of the earth. This practice is very common where the trenches are muddy or knee or hip deep in water. It is the recognized custom after dark when working parties are carrying up ammunition or rations. Not rarely some of the men of these parties are hit by bullets put across from fixed machine guns. It is a weird sight on a dark night to go overland and in the dim light of the flares or star shells to discern long rows of men trudging along with packs of supplies. They loom up suddenly before you, or perchance a column of the ever-useful packmills pass patiently carrying their burdens overland, and often by day one comes across the body of a mule that was given rest from its weary toil by a German bullet, at which times one cannot but wonder if in a happier land the patient plodding a much-abused pack mule is given his just mead of appreciation and kindness. When someone pays the price of his recklessness in going overland, the price is most often exacted by a bullet. What insidious little things bullets are. They sneak in and hit you without forewarning you in any way, and they may hit so hard that you do not know you are hit even then. Most men out there have more respect for them than for shells, for often you have time to duck against the side of a trench, and so partly dodge a heavy shell. But you can't dodge a bullet. It gives you a most uncanny feeling to be taking a shortcut overland and suddenly to hear a ping-thud just beside you, thus learning that some German is trying to pot you as you potted an innocent red deer on your last hunting trip. Or you may be walking quietly through apparently safe trenches, maybe dreaming of your loved ones at home, when a bullet thuds into the trench wall a few feet from your head, insolently spattering mud into your face. Then you know you are alive only by the grace of God, and the poor aim of the German. But despite these risks, all take the chance of going overland to less than a quarter-mile trip by 100 yards, or to miss a particularly muddy bit of trench. Any day you choose when you are five or six hundred yards from the front line, you may see scattered parties of men crossing in the open. The regimental age post of the blank Canadian battalion in October 1916, when they were doing their tour in the lines, could be reached in two ways, one by trench, a roundabout route of over a mile, the other one half mile by trench and one quarter overland. The former route was never employed, except on regular relief days, officers and men passing daily the one quarter mile overland, only about six hundred yards from the enemy front line. The field ambulance stretcher-bearers made the trip twice daily, and one day when I was crossing over with their sergeant, I asked him why the German snipers did not hit us. Ah, Heine is too busy keeping himself out of sight to notice us, was the careless reply. But at times those crossing this space heard a bullet whistling nearby, or pinged thudding into the ground close to their feet. After a raid by our troops one early winter's morning, when I had been attending the wounded for some time, I came up to take a breath of air. A trench led from this cellar of mine, some two thousand yards, to a village of reasonable safety, but the road cut off two or three hundred yards of that distance. This road was in plain sight of the Germans, yet some of our wounded Tommy's walking cases were leading a crowd of five or six wounded Huns by the road, the party altogether numbering ten or twelve. As we watched them, suddenly within a few yards of them burst two shells. All the men broke into a double and jumped into a trench beside the road, while a few more shells fell about. It is an ironical truth that the only members of the party hit were three of the Germans. On a certain relief day, when food was scarce, a medical officer started for a YMCA canteen in Neuveltsenfast for some chocolate, taking a shortcut over land, as he could save one hundred yards by this route. Meeting a soldier he stopped to inquire as to direction, and this saved the life of the officer, for a shell struck the ground a few feet ahead on the spot where he would have been had he not stopped. As he and the Tommy hugged a tree nearby, two more shells struck the same spot, sprinkling them with earth. They turned and ran in the direction from which the doctor had come, amidst the roars of laughter of some soldiers in a trench at the sight of the rather corpulent form of the medical officer on the double. So little is thought out there of narrow escapes, and when the officer made the same trip in the dusk of evening he found that the canteen had run out of chocolate. In what had once been a little village, but was now a mass of ruins, the trenches ran through the streets. Our mess was situated in the cellar of a house to which we could get either in a roundabout way by trench or by crossing a road overland. No one ever dreamed of going any other route than the overland, despite the fact that the road was in plain view of the Germans, who had fixed on it a machine gun with which they now and then swept it from end to end. I admit, frankly, that I never crossed that road without a sigh of relief when I reached the other side. It was on a Christmas day. I started out to make an inspection of my lines with my sanitary sergeant and a runner who knew the best routes. Arriving at a support trench and wishing to go to the firing line, the guide started over the parapet. On being asked the purpose, he said that it was a much shorter way, but to my relief the sergeant told him to go by trench, for often one would rather go through a dangerous zone than appear afraid of it in the presence of his men. However, we made the examination of the lines. After we had finished the firing line and were returning, we found ourselves crossing overland by the route over which he had attempted to take us to the front. He had led us up a gradually ascending communication trench, and so unknown to us had reached this overland trail. Nothing happened, nothing was said about it, but I certainly felt relieved when I was once again in a trench without having a German bullet sneaking between my ribs, how little Tommy cares about risking his life if it lessens his task. In passing it may be mentioned that on this Christmas day none of that fraternizing took place which had taken place the previous Christmas. In fact, early on the Christmas morning the battalion on our left, after a severe bombardment, put on a raid, and Christmas night the enemy retaliated with heavy stuff of all kinds. Probably this is as it should be, for while it may look well in print to read of our troops and the Germans exchanging cigarettes and eatables and no man's land, it is detrimental to discipline and injurious to the best fighting spirit. It would be much more repugnant to the Anglo-Saxon at any rate to kill men with whom he had just passed a pleasant social half-hour. This may appear heartless, but war is a heartless game, and fraternizing may very well be left until after the peace-articles are signed. of dropping shells at irregular moments. Suddenly we heard the horrible shriek of an approaching whiz-bang. It passed over our heads and banged into the earth twenty feet or so beyond us. Knowing that others would probably follow it, and that they might have twenty feet less of a range, we jumped into a four-foot deep shell-hole which happily was beside us. We hugged affectionately the German side of the hole to take advantage of whatever protection it afforded. One after another in rapid succession, three more of these shells shrieked toward us. Fortunately our unuttered prayer that they would not come to see us in our hole was answered, for they followed the first and struck twenty or twenty-five feet past us, just close enough to sprinkle us well with mud. While we waited a few more minutes to see if any more were coming, I turned over and faced Kelly. Don't you think, Kelly? I asked seriously, that lying in a shell-hole like this is rather an undignified position for too proud Anglo-Saxon? No doubt it is sore, but it the good deal safer than staying where we were, and if there's one town captain that I've learned to respect more than another in this war, it's the shriek of an oncoming shell, when it seems to be coming in your direction. Now, Duds, shells that fail to explode, is different, do you remember, sore, the day we came in to relay that twenty-eight battalion here, as the Colonel, the Adjutant, and yourself were coming over the crest of the ridge, and I bringing up the rear with that luggage of yours? He looked at me reproachfully, for though looking after my luggage was part of his duties, he never pretended to like it. A dud landed just below us, the sound of a dud thudding into the earth near boy, one is sweeter to give me than ever was the gurgling of a brook on a June day down the banks of the lax of Galarney. Kelly's advice is often worth taking, for he has been out there well into his second year, and while he has not yet been wounded, no one ever accused him of lack of courage. He occasionally does things with a slight, almost imperceptible grimace of pained surprise, but he always does them, when ordered. In my early days I was prone at times to take a peep over the front-line parapet at the always interesting no-man's land. Boy, wouldn't do too much of that if I was you, doctor, he said respectfully, though at the time I thought there was also a trace of pity in his brook, for out there is not consider healthy, me poor old father, although a mercy on him always told me to curb my curiosity, and a Padre have been here a long time, told me when first I came that his one advice to me was, don't be curious. I always encouraged him to carry on with his philosophizing, except when the dull look in his eye and his exaggerated stand at attention, told me that he had somehow obtained my rum ration as well as his own. I noticed, sir, that them that are here longest peep the least, that's why they are here longest. Do you dodge when you hear a shell coming, Kelly? It always woys to duck, sir, for with very big shells, which come slower, you may be quick enough to get against the soid of a trench. I have the pieces miss you, and when it's a whiz bang, air bullet, and if you're able to duck, you know you're not it. Just at dusk of a warm spring evening as we cross an open field, we had the misfortune to find ourselves bracketed by German gas shells. That is, some of the shells were falling just short of us, and others were passing a little over us. We recognized that they were gas shells by the whirring noise they make, going through the air, and by the soft thudding sound of their explosion. But had we had any doubt, that sweetish, though well-hated, pineapple odor of the gas was reaching our nostrils. The previous evening we had had for some hours a heavy gas shelling about our aid post, during much of which we were either strangling from the gas fumes, which may some of the men dreadfully ill, or we were smothering to death with our gas masks on, doing dressings for wounded men. So, taking all this into consideration, we had no desire for a repetition of the dose. The shells were thudding into the earth about seventy or eighty yards on either side of us, and our dangers were too. A straight hit by one of the shells, the result of which would be mutilation or death, or the bursting of one at our feet as the inhalation by us of such concentrated fumes might mean a little wooden cross above us. Behind the lines the gas masks or respirators are worn flung over the shoulder. In the lines the rule is to wear them in the alert position, that is, on the front of the chest, with the flap open, ready for instant use. We had them in this position and were carrying the apparatus in our hands, so as to be able to insert the tube into the mouth rapidly, if need be. Had we adjusted them at once, we should have found it difficult to avoid falling into the numerous shell holes for seeing through the goggles on a dusky evening is most unsatisfactory. My companion's practice die noted that the shells, while bracketing us, were falling much more thickly on our right than on our left. After he had drawn my attention to this, we turned quickly to the left, and we had the good fortune soon to be well away from the explosions. It need hardly be remarked to our intense relief. That was a happy observation of yours, Kelly, I remarked, when we were out of danger and were literally breathing easily again. To know about what it was so, or, of course, a man shouldn't need a wall to fall on him, to know that something's coming his way. I could almost see his sly squint in my direction. He dearly loved to display his hard-earned knowledge, and as he was too valuable a man to get angry with, except for good reason, his remarks were generally accepted good-naturedly. Kelly is a strict disciplinarian, at least so far as others are concerned. While he takes liberties in passing his own opinions to me, he resents any other private doing likewise. In his presence one day at a sick parade, a soldier who had been marked by me, M and D, medicine and duty, that is, a given medicine, but fit for duty, muttered as something to the effect that one never gets a fair deal from a military doctor anyway. Before I could reprimand him, Kelly hustled him out of the room, saying angrily, big lobs, you may have been exposed to discipline, but it never took. In his insistence on everyone else's carrying out all the laws of military discipline, while breaking most of them himself, he is the equal of almost any officer. On a delightful spring day, after the battle of Arras, our battalion was holding the front line out beyond Theles. My aid post was on a sunken road near Riverfall, one of the many sunken roads which are talked about by anyone who has ever been at the front. The wounded had to be brought to us by stretch of airs at night, as the whole front here was a huge salient with the huns pumping lead, forget-me-nots, from three sides by day on the least exposure of our men. So our work was all night work, and I laid lazily on a stretcher in an abandoned German gun pit, taking a sunbath. There originally had been a roof over this gun pit. It was made up of one-inch boards, laid carelessly across steel supports, and in the remains of this roof, two little swallows were gaily chirping love-making and nest-building for their family to be, ignoring entirely man's inhumanity to man. Kelly was sitting on his haunches, his gray head held on one side, thoughtfully watching these happy little birds. Well, Kelly, I demanded, of what are you dreaming? I was just thinking, doctor, he answered, without turning his head, what a puny and humor man has in comparison with them swallows younger. Have swallows a sense of humor, Kelly? Have they a sense of humor? Boy, they're laughing at you this very minute. I turned to my head a trifle sharply in his direction. Ah, me and the rest of humanity, listen to them laugh, and why shouldn't they laugh when they think what a gay world they live in, with room for all of them and all of us, and yet, while they live and love and have their young and doy in peace, we've been with the brains of gods, so we say, has been our toy, inventing new mains, killing each other. And for hoy, for a few acres of bogland, for the privilege of christianizing and chatting and hating by giving him some glass beads in exchange for his ivory and his India rubber and his spoices. Take a look yonder at that skylark. Wouldn't he do your heart good? And he pointed to where one of those joy-giving birds was soaring higher still and higher and lavishly pouring out upon an ungrateful world, his flood of harmony divine. What about liberty as opposed to this cursed German militarism? Oh, yes, oh, I'll admit there's a bit of truth in that, but at bottom it's mostly commerce that causes war. Yes, I shouldn't like to have the Prussian military heel on my neck. God knows the Englishman and his toim has left a heel mark or two on the Irishman's neck, but at that I'd rather have him, especially of late years, than that cursed Hun, for he wears nails in his boots and I've hated the Englishman all my life. What the devil did you come out here for anyway, Kelly? You're the first person that's ever handed to me that there's anything private about this fight. The Russians and the Prussians and the French and the Italian and even the Turk in this fight. Is there any just written why Irishman shouldn't butt in, too? He asked in an injured tone, but interrupted me, strained a thought. Big pardon. You know, mention it. I was going to say that though I've hated the Englishman all my life, I'd be a fear to live in his country for I'd get to love him. He's got such a deep sense of humor, why he praises the Canadians, that he actually makes you believe you're winning the war with your two or three hundred thousand men while he's got a couple of million in the field. Who took Vimy Ridge, Kelly? We did, sir. We, Canadians, with a fifty to sixty percent of British born, like myself, and a damn fine bit of fighting it was, too. Sure, truly so, or I wouldn't belittle it for anything, but Vimy Ridge is only a couple of miles long, and British troops are defended something like a hundred and fifty miles and the most of that is held by English troops with a scattering of the haters Irish and Scotch. Look at the casualty list over a period and you'll find who it is that's doing for liberty. It's mostly the English and the French, as far as I can see. The Canadians have done nobly, sir, and no one could deny it, but they mustn't think they went in the war or boy themselves. The last time I was in London, the funniest comedy I've seen was a couple of young Canadian officers on a bus telling an educated Englishman how the empire should be run and the Englishman lathened without even cracking a schmoil while the British toys london for having a straight street and for having old fashioned buses and lied to George for his lack of firmness with Euterland and so on and so on. And the Englishman listened as if they were the wise men of the east bowing his assent to all their talk and at last he said with a long face, there's no doubt you young gentleman or right if we had a few more men like the Honourable Mr Hughes of Australia and the Sir Sam Hughes of Canada we had to be in a better shape now. I'm very happy to have met yous. And he shook their hands and left while they swallowed what he said, bait hook, loin and all. So I slipped up to them and saluted and I says, bag in your pod and sores, and says I, well I happened to know who that man was, it was Lord Warchild, the great international banker. It may have been the emperor of China for all I know, but they swallowed that too and ignoring me one says, ah he shook hands with us and on their faces was a bland smile of joiled like satisfaction. Oh you Canadians are great snobs, so you are. While I've heard yourself lied to the skies, the noble parts taken in the war by the blue blood England, you're just a big snob as any of the others. Oh, I beg your pardon, sir. I'm sorry for saying it. How about thinking it? The only thing I can call my own since I joined the army are my thoughts. But I wouldn't think it against your wishes for the world, sir, said he smiling slightly. I agree that the blue bloods have fought well but no better than the rest of us and may have something to fight for, for while I'd like to ask you where was a poor devil like me to fight for, who'd support my children if I was killed. Your children, I didn't know you were married. Oh, that I was married. Oh, all classes out here fight well. I agree with that writer who said that all men are alike except for their clothes. Now, except for our clothes, or I don't suppose anyone would be able to tell which was the captain and which is servant, with another sly grin. Probably not, except for the whisky you drink. I may drink a slightly greater amount than you, sir, but I'd notice we drank the same brand. Yes, I've noticed that too, Kelly. That's why there's never any to offer any of my friends when they call. Oh, assure you, doctor, there's none of that wasted. Probably not, from your standpoint. Now, Kelly, I'd like some tea and see if you can put a little less candle, currents, and sand in it than you did this morning. If you leave the last half inch in the bottom of your cup, sir, you'd never know there was any thin but tea in it. And he left to prepare as good a cup of tea as one could desire, except for these extras, which a paternal quartermaster always inserts into the various articles of diet. Of course, the fact that the tea and sugar come in sandbags and the candles are put into the sugar to prevent breaking them adds to this complication. Kelly is a good cook and no mean philosopher. He continually emphasizes the importance of what he calls a sense of humor. One night, when he had taken too much of what he called at various times the rather human producer, poutine, or honey-do, I heard him say to a companion, As, my friend, Lord Norfolk says, There remain these three faith, hope, and charity, and the greatest of these is a sense of humor. A day came when Kelly, going for water with two old gasoline cans slung over his shoulders, was struck by a shell. He was some seven hundred yards from my aid post at the time. Fortunately, some stretcher-bearers nearby went to his aid. Though the shortest way out was rearward, and well he knew it, he insisted on being carried back, explain his absence to the doctor. I saw them bringing him in and ran to him, for, in spite of any faults, his never-failing loyalty and his good-humored and faithful service had endeared him to me. He had been covered by a coat of a stretcher-bearer, so I could not see at once what his injuries were. Where have you been hit, Kelly? I demanded anxiously, for his face was pale. Day amends her, anatomically or geographically. And a wan smile lit up the pallid face as his quick-witted humor got the better of his suffering. But I had taken the coat away, and I saw that the wound was fatal. Keeping my head low so that he could not see the expression on my face, or the tears in my eyes, I gently dressed the wound. He bore the handling without flinching. As I finished, he said bravely, Well, doctor, they've done for me this time, or you needn't try to hide it from me. I know, and I'd not care to have only half of me hoppin' about anyway. Oh, we'll pull you through, Kelly, old man. You promised to be my chauffeur after the war, but I know you never did like working for me, and now you're trying to dodge. And I tried to smile, but he saw the tears running down my cheeks. No, no, you're a joke. Now, doctor, I know it's all over with me, and really, it don't matter, for there are no one that cares. And as I looked at him reproachfully, except you, sir, and God knows why you do, for I've been but an impudent servant to you. But, doctor, looking at me imploringly, forgive me now, don't you, for it was only tazin' I was. Dear old Kelly, I said, as I pressed his cold hand, whatever have I to forgive? You're the best friend I have in all France. A lump in my throat prevented me from saying more. His hand returned the pressure, but there was no strength in it. Then, to cheer me up, he said, I know, Capmo, I always did respect the cross and the abstract of course, since a knelt at the knees of my poor old mother, rest or soul. Well, I never had any great desire to look up at one of them little wooden crosses through six-bed earth, and the paling face lit up with its whimsical smile. What worryin' me, though, is who'll look after yourself. You're such a crank about how your bacon's cooked and the sand and the tea, and, just at that moment, the pottery came in from a neighboring battalion headquarters. He had made me promise that if ever anything should happen to the wayward Kelly, who should have been, but wasn't, a regular attendant at his church parades, I should send at once for him. I had done so as soon as I saw that poor Kelly was hard hit. I laid Kelly's hand gently down and slipped away. I was called hurriedly back a few minutes later by the Padre. He wants you, doctor, he said, briefly. Kelly's eyes met mine. His were getting dim. As I took his hand, his fingers feebly gripped mine. I bent my head to catch the whispered words that issued from his lips. Goodbye, doctor, I'm leavin' for the great beyond. There'd no use grumblin' and I don't, for I've had a full life. Me, friends, often said too full, but sure, they didn't know, with the faint smile. But that's that day when you showed me the picture you carry over your heart of your three fine young boys, God bless them, I've wanted, when the war was over, to go back with you and see him. Will you do me a favor, doctor boy? His voice was growing feeble. The tears were flowing unheeded down my cheeks. I could not speak, so I squeezed his hand in ascent. Will you talk to them sometimes, a Kelly, and tell them that with all my faults I lobed her daddy and tried to serve him well, and that if I was sure me death would cause you to be taken safely back to them, I'd draw happy and content. God bless you and them, and— His voice died away. His dim eyes closed, and his soul passed into that undiscovered aborn from which no traveller returns. That night the Padre and I buried him in a shell-hole erecting over his grave a little wooden cross on which we wrote Private James Kelly, number A5900, blank Canadian battalion, a loyal, generous, faithful soldier, and friend. language was given us to hide our thoughts, and this saying might be enlarged by adding that slang was given us to hide our language. The Frenchman, in making this witticism, was referring not only to the beautiful language of Cognay and Molière, but to speech in general. However, if he visited the lines of the Canadian or British troops today, even though his knowledge of English were perfect, he would hear many words and expressions not found in the dictionaries of any country or heard in polite society. Necessity is the mother of invention. It seems that in all national or international games, such as the sport of our American allies baseball, or the sport of kings and emperors, war, necessity demands that a special language shall evolve, and so around each and in the midst of each, an expressive, though sometimes inelegant, slang has grown up, understood, and employed only by the initiated. In the case of the present war, this slang is made up of a mixture of English, French, pantomime, and American or Canadian. Some people give North America credit for a language of its own. On a visit to Paris some years ago, I was passing the entrance of a theater on the Boulevard des Capuzines when a grisette approached me with a bonceur, shallie, and proceeded to ask if I were lonely. Not desiring to be bothered, I replied shortly that I did not speak French. Oh, shallies de l'épée, monsieur, she required coyly, oh, speak the American. And many of our own brothers of the motherland do not admit that we Canadians speak the same language as they, but an accented modification of it, though they admire the pointedness of many of our expressions. I well remember the amusement caused in an English officer's mess by one of them telling the others that he had heard a Canadian say that he liked the Englishman's accent. And, with that charmingly bantering way that Englishmen have, he said with a smile to a couple of us Canadians present, rather a jolly wood of side can't you see it, you priceless old things. And, at his request, we all filled our glasses again, while one of the Canadians, for the sake of argument, expressed the opinion that the term accent might as truly be applied to the Englishman's rather as to our rather, or to the English both as to our harder sounding, and not so euphonious, but probably equally correct pronunciation of the word bath. Of course, he was met by good-natured smiles of tolerance and pity, and the reply that since we think their pronunciation shows more euphony, why do we not pronounce as they do? Because if we did, somewhat at home would probably hand us an over-ripe egg, was the answer. The slang of the lines resembles a new system of Esperanto since it takes in, in a cosmopolitan manner, all the languages of the neighborhood as well as some whose existence may be doubted. For example, no bon means no good, and is a mixture of English, French, and a disgusted look. Napou, which is probably a mutilated form of the French il n'y a bleu, there is no more, has a most versatile meaning and is used in many different senses. Sometimes it signifies that some article of the rations is finished as the rum is Napou, a not uncommon state of affairs, and other times it is used as we employ the slang phrase nothing doing. For instance, one man asks another to have a drink and he, having put himself, or having been put, on the Indian list, replies, Napou for mine, then there is the sense in which it is used, meaning killed. Bill Jones is killed, and somebody says, well, they Napou the Bill Jones last night, poor Bill, he wasn't such a bad old blank blank blank blank, after all. In the air service, when a man is killed, they often employ the expression that so and though is gone east. The above will illustrate, but by no means exhaust, the versatility of Napou, for in variety of meaning it is almost in a class by itself. Compris is another sample of broken, one could not say anglicized, French, and it is employed with the signification, do you understand, or in slang Canadian, d'aigat-mestis? And here it may be remarked that a Tommy possessing the above three expressions, Napou, n'a bon, a compri, with some additions from the sign language, although he knows no other word of French, is able to do anything with the French peasant from using his cook stove to heat a tin of pork and beans, to making love to his daughter. Of course, the latter effort is no doubt helped by the fact that love is much the same in all languages. Then all the different shells and types of trench mortar ammunition have their nicknames, such as pineapples, rum jars, flying pigs, Jack Johnson's, fish tails, and whiz bangs, all according to their shape, their sound, or the fuss they make when landing. To put on a show is to make an attack on the enemy. To get pipped means to get wounded. If the wound is severe enough to cause the recipient to be sent to England, it is called a blighty, in which case, if the wound is not dangerous to life or limb, the others stand about looking imbeiously at the wounded man and telling him he is a lucky devil. But if the wound is fatal, they say, he got his RIP. The above will serve to illustrate the more common slang phrases used by the soldier and officer alike for what Tommy does today, his officers, do tomorrow. There are, of course, many other slang expressions, some being more vulgar than expressive. Occasionally, a group of men will impress you with the idea that they are so accustomed to slang and swearing that to call each other a blank liar is a password, as Kelly expressed it to me one time, and in passing it may be said that the words which would be fighting words in Western Canada are common enough, fighting among the men is exceedingly uncommon. Good nature and good fellowship are universal, and it is rare indeed that even the hottest argument leads to blows. Probably the boys have instinctively decided that blows are for your enemies, not for your friends, and that fighting enough is to be had on the other side of no man's land. But slang, swearing, or general toughness, is no proof that a man is not an excellent soldier. Out there we have found that cool courage and self-sacrifice are as common among the denizens of the slum or the employees of the workshop or factory, as among those who spend their time following the hounds or adorning drawing rooms. Education and culture may develop the virtues, but they do not create them. By the same token, poor or unhealthy surroundings may stultify the same virtues, but do not kill them. I well recall a rough, uneducated Irish Canadian boy from Gryffindown who was in charge of a group of machine gunners and who was afraid of nothing on the earth, under the earth, or over the earth. Fagan, that name will do as well as another, went up with his company to go over the top in an attack, but at the last moment they were ordered not to advance. A company of Oxford and Bucks, just to Fagan's right, were going over, and he, being disappointed at the cancellation of his order, pretended that he had not received it, joined the British with his section, and went into the fight with them. He was such a bonny fighter and was so useful to the British that they were loud in their praises of the work of him and his men, for with his machine gun he did a much useful slaughter, which he described on his return, as some beautiful pickens. On account of his good work and the high praise that it received from the British he was given a special leave of a couple of weeks to the white lights, or what remains of them, in London. As he left his little group of the men of his unit, all of whom loved him, and all of whom his generous, brave heart held as brothers, instead of the usual goodbye boys, and good luck, he turned to them with a broad grin on his face, and said, Da hell, which is all, may his have to go over the top of a damn arm away, and with a wave of the hand and amidst the laughter of his buys, he started for the railhead. But slangy sayings and swearing are not limited in use to the boys. A major Garwell was somewhat noted for his habit, and sometimes spat out remarks quite thoughtlessly in company in which it were better he had not done so. On one occasion he had to interview a state dignified Major General Osborne of an English corps to our left, and differing in opinion with the latter to the horror of the other officers present, he exclaimed vehemently without even knowing that he said it, but damn your eyes Osborne, that trench should run the other way. To everyone's surprise the Major General only stared at him, seeing no doubt that it was a slip of the tongue, and not intentional disrespect. He also probably took into account the fact that the Major was a Canadian from whom Englishmen hardly ever know what to expect in the line of discipline. But a week later the English General showed that beneath a serious and dignified exterior he had a well-developed sense of humor. He was again discussing some engineering problem with our Gallant Major before much the same group of officers, and turning suddenly he blurted out, but damn your eyes Garwell, I want this done my way. The General himself, and even Garwell, joined in the roar of laughter which followed. And now you have the reason that from that day to this the Canadian Major is always spoken of as, damn your eyes Garwell. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Just Looking About At the front you never need to go beyond the day on which you write to find things of interest to tell those who have not known the life, who are so unfortunate as to have to remain hundreds or perhaps thousands of miles from the center of interest in the greatest game the world has ever known, the game of war, being played at this moment by all the highly-cultured civilized and refined peoples of the world. It is a bright spring day in May 1917 for so-called sunny France is trying to redeem herself after an abominable winter. I am sitting on a tin biscuit box at the entrance of my RAP, Regimental Aid Post, just on the outskirts of a ruined village. Had I taken this position one month ago, my stay in the land of the living would have lasted something under ten minutes, for then the German front line was about three hundred yards away. But since that time the Battle of Vimy Ridge has come and gone, and the Germans are pushed well back beyond the ridge. So it is comparatively safe to sit here, for the only danger is from a stray shell, as it happens at the moment the Huns are too busy defending themselves from a heavy assault from the Canadians on our right to send any shells this way. This morning a number of villages opposite our right front are to be taken, and as I sit looking about, our guns are firing so continuously that they make what the boys call drumfire, that is a continuous roll, such as kettle drums make. Our artillery is so immense in number of guns that drumfire is common by day. By night this guy on the horizon is lit up in all directions by the repeated flashes of the guns, giving the appearance of an immense fireworks exhibition. All about me are the signs of war. I am looking toward a mass of ruins which occupy the site of what was once a well-built and prosperous little city. All that now remains of it is a stone wall here and there, and everywhere piles of stone and brick and mortar. Not one roof remains. There on the left, that high pile of demolished walls, is all that exists of a once elaborate church. Amidst the ruins the cellars are occupied as habitations for the troops. If you wander among them you will see some strange names given to their quarters by the wags of the company's such names as the Devil's Inn, Home Sweet Home, the Savoy, the Sister Susie Hotel, and other such devices. But there is one object among the ruins that strikes my eye. It is two hundred yards from where I am seated. It appears plainly to be the shattered trunk of a tree, two feet in diameter and twenty feet in height. It is the largest in the vicinity of those that remain to wave their withered and emaciated arms in mocking derision at our so-called civilization. Let us walk across to it together. Until we are almost touching it we recognize nothing but a shattered tree trunk. On closer inspection we find that what appeared to be the bark is only a good paper imitation of bark, and its irregular upper end has been made by hand, not as we had supposed by the impact of a shell. Behind the tree, at its root, is a passageway down which we go to find ourselves actually entering the trunk through a small door. Looking up we see a perfectly made steel cylinder up which steps lead to the top. Here a seat is placed and an observer may look through a small slit in the steel casing and through a split in the imitation bark, getting a good view of things far in advance. This is the explanation of this strange affair. A large tree which stood upon this spot had been shattered by a shell, the shattering having taken place when the Germans held Vimy Ridge. This shattered tree was only four hundred yards from the enemy front line. Months before the Battle of Vimy Ridge some quick-minded engineer noticed this tree, and the idea occurred that it could be utilized to good advantage. The steel frame was made and covered in exact imitation of the tree trunk, all other arrangements made, and one night the tree was removed and this counterfeit of it was put up. When day broke an observer was sitting comfortably in this strange observation post looking out upon the enemy trenches, watching the movements of the Germans, at the same time being safe from any danger except the straight hit of a shell. Now let us return to our biscuit box and see what else there is of interest. All about our sitting boys with red crosses on their sleeves. They are stretcher-bearers for a field ambulance. Here and there is a gun position from which a bang and a flash comes spasmodically as the guns throw their lead and steel souvenirs at the Germans. To our right as we face the enemy lines is a much-used road, up which we can see motor lorries by the score pouring forward their loads of ammunition. Then there are pack mules, motorcyclists, ambulances, and a strange sight, cavalry are going forward. Is the war changing from the old trench warfare of the past three years into open warfare of the past century? Ah, there is still another sight and a pleasant one. It is a group of German prisoners going to the rear, guarded by a couple of Tommies. Word comes back that the attack which began some hours ago and at which the guns are still mumbling and rumbling in anger has been a success. The objectives have been reached and many prisoners taken, though the Huns are making a stiff stand of it. Overhead, aeroplanes are humming to and fro, looking far in advance of our troops, seeing the effects of our gunfire, signalling instructions to our artillery, watching the movements of the enemy, and generally acting as the eyes of the army. In front of us and to the left is a crater, an immense hollow in the ground caused by the explosion by the enemy or ourselves at some earlier stage of the war of a huge load of dynamite, aminol, or some other high explosive. This crater is situated in what was no man's land before April 9 and the Great Push, at which time it was used as a killing place for our enemies. Now it is a burial place for our friends. The French government has notified us that if in burying our dead we will put the bodies in groups of 50 in each burial plot, they will buy the hallowed ground, keep it in repair, and present it to the British people. And the core burying party has utilized Litchfield Crater for this purpose, has gathered together 50 or 60 of our gallant dead, and deposited their sacred remains in this spot, erecting over the grave a large wooden cross with the names of the dead upon it. In limestone they have laid out the following epitaph, to the brave Canadians of the Second Division who gave up their lives on April 9, 1917, R.I.P. What hallowed shrines these cemeteries of 50 will become after the war when those whose loved ones paid their full measure of devotion in the cause of freedom are able to come to visit the deservedly honored graves of their husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, and sweet hearts. I visited this little cemetery this morning. As I left it, some Tommies passed with a large red paper balloon sent across by the Germans with the message, Canadians, we are ready to quit if you are. But the Canadians, the British, the Americans, or the French are not yet ready to quit. Nor will they be till the day comes when Prussian militarism is curbed so thoroughly that your boys and mine will not have to give up their lives in conquering it ten years from now. CHAPTER VII. GAST. About a month after the Canadians had taken Vimy Ridge we relieved the blank Canadian battalion in the town of Vimy where our battalion was in support to another battalion holding the front lines some distance in advance. Our regimental aid post on our previous stay in this town had been in the cellar of a brewery near the railway station. Since we had left the shelling in the neighborhood had become so severe that this cellar had been abandoned. It had caught fire and all the woodwork had burned up. Out of curiosity I visited this old cellar on our rival at Vimy and found it still hot as Hades from the heating up of the brick and cement. It was absolutely uninhabitable, so we were forced to search for other quarters. The officers of number blank Canadian field ambulance with that camaraderie so prevalent out there invited us to share with them a couple of old cellars to which they had gone on deserting the brewery. We accepted gladly. One of their two cellars they used as sleeping and eating quarters the other as a dressing station where they were kept exceedingly busy attending the wounded. The Germans had the range of Vimy to a nice city and with true German love of destruction they poured five hundred to a thousand shells into the ruins daily. Whenever the Germans are driven from a village their practice is to ruin it by high explosive shells sent from their new line of defense and these two cellars were about the center of the Vimy target. The previous day two officers of the field ambulance were standing a few feet apart in a little room off from the cellar used as sleeping quarters. A table stood between them on which were two lighted candles. Suddenly through the floor above came a four inch shell just missing the table and sinking into the floor. Fortunately for the two officers it did not explode. It was a dud. The rush of air caused by the shell extinguished one of the candles. The other remained lighted. It maybe understood easily that the officers felt a bit unnerved. After staring at the hole in the floor for some moments Captain M picked up the lighted candle in one hand and the extinguished one in the other and endeavored to light one from the other. His hands shook so that he could not make the candles meet. After a number of vain attempts to bring them together he gave it up. His nervous system was so shaken that he was sent to the rest station on two weeks leave. We arrived shortly after the shell had gone through the cellar. Captain M himself told us of it and his humorous description of his attempts to get the candles within six inches of each other was ludicrous in the extreme. After an appetizing supper eaten in the cellar with the officers of the field ambulance we medical officers took turns attending to the many wounded who were arriving. All went well till eleven o'clock that night when we heard the whir of gas shells coming in our direction. As they burst close to us we soon smelt their penetrating pineapple odor. The huns continued to pour them in large numbers in our direction and as the town of Vimy is in a hollow at the foot of Vimy Ridge the atmosphere soon became laden with the poison gas which being heavier than air sinks to the bottom of any hollows. The air in our cellars became saturated with the filthy death-dealing gases in spite of the wet blanket which we hung over the entrance to prevent their entering. Had we been able to stay in the cellar and keep the blanket tightly placed over the entrance our misery would have been much less but wounded were coming in from all directions and we had to keep going in and out in turns to the cellar in which we did our dressings. The gas kept thickening every minute. To add to the discomfort these gas shells contained two gases one entered the lungs causing congestion of their tissues followed by inflammation suffocation and death if a sufficient amount were inhaled. The other lackamattery gas called tear-shell gas by the soldiers which not only inflames temporarily the conjunctiva of the eyes but is cursively irritating while it lasts. Naturally we quickly adjusted our gas mask but as it was fifty feet from one cellar to the other and we dared not flash lights to pass over the stone and mortar of the fallen walls we found it necessary to remove our masks for moving as well as for the purpose of tying up the wounds in an acceptable manner. Thus by midnight our eyes were as red as uncooked beefsteak and they felt as if they had been sandpapered. Our lungs on each respiration felt as though they were gripped in a closing vice. The gas mask acted by filtering the inhaled air through a chemical which neutralizes the poisonous materials in the gases. When we removed them we had severe attacks of coughing which were relieved only by breathing through the mouthpiece of the masks. Ours dragged slowly by. Still the whir of approaching shells and the soft thud of their bursting continued. Misery? Never elsewhere had we experienced anything again to it. The inflamed eyes, the suffocation in our lungs, the knowledge that inhalation of sufficient of the gas would put us into kingdom come. We knew that we could easily get out of this poisonous atmosphere by climbing to the top of Vimy Ridge, only a few hundred yards behind us. But we did not for that would be deserting our posts. All these things combined to make it the most miserable, soul-torturing night we had ever experienced. And to add to it all our artillery was in a hollow nearby where the gas was so thick that it prevented our gunners from retaliating, making it all take and no give. We all learned that night what it felt like to long to desert. We learned that there are times when a man who is brave enough to be a coward deserves sympathy. But thank God there are few such men in our armies. The brave man and the coward both at times experienced the same sensation of fear, the coward allowing the emotion to conquer him while the brave man grits his teeth and carries on. For nearly five hours we endured this misery, wondering when we would have inhaled enough of the poison to put our names among the casualties. One of the strange things that struck me during that long night was that I heard no word of censure or condemnation of the Germans who were the cause of our suffering. We cursed war in general, we cursed bimi and all that pertained to it, we cursed the inactivity of our artillery, and we cursed the gases. But the misery was taken as one of the fortunes of war and no one wasted his breath in vain attempts to beat the Germans with his mouth, as Lord Roberts expressed it at the beginning of the conflict. Often when I am five thousand miles away from the firing line, sitting perhaps in a smoking-car, and listening to the abuse of our enemy, I think of this circumstance. After nearly three hours of the wretched gassing, I had been lying for some little time in the upper of two bunks, wearing my mask, feeling very much smothered, and wondering if it were pleasanter to die quickly from the gas or slowly from the mask. For the masks give a most uncomfortable feeling of impending suffocation. Finally I decided that I preferred the gas to the mask. I pulled it off, swore softly to myself, and muttered that I chose a quick death in preference to a slow one. Same here, Doc, said a jolly voice from below me. I took off my ballet mask some time ago, and had been lying here wondering how long you were going to endure it. Looking down I saw the smiling face of Captain S., a chaplain who had been there the previous day, burying some of our brave boys who had paid the greatest price that man can pay. He was a most courageous chap, always good-humoured under any circumstances, and the gas had not lessened his courage. We choked for a few moments, then we tried, without success, to argue courage into a little cockney for whom this was a cruel initiation into the firing line, and whose wind was up, as the boys express it, when a man's nerve is about all gone. I don't know what happened to the little cockney in the end, but my last memory of him was that he was still arguing that this was no place for a white man, with which sentiment we all agreed. Shortly we were glad to reapply our masks, as the air became almost thick enough to cut with a knife, and that vice on our chests kept tightening. Though the night seemed a thousand years long, it finally came to an end, just as our nerves were at breaking point. The gas masks had been on our faces for the better part of five hours. What size of relief we gave as those abominable shells ceased to come over, and in their place we heard the crump of high explosive shells. Dame Nature completed the blessing by pouring down a drizzling rain which dissolved the gases and cleared the air, the rain then lying in opalescent pools in the shell holes. How glorious God's fresh air seemed to us after that atrocious experience, with what pleasure we laid aside our masks, though they had, without doubt, saved our lives. How exquisite to feel that the grains of sand between our eyelids and eyeballs seemed to be absorbing, and what a satisfaction to know that, despite the agony of it all, we had done our bit like men, for the greatest gifts that God can give are those necessary for the playing of a man's part. Day was breaking when two runners came from the officer commanding B Company to tell me that he wanted me to come over to the railway embankment where his dugout was to see a number of his men who were suffering severely from the gas. To come for me these boys had to cross a field for 300 yards where the enemy were dropping Jack Johnson's immense high explosive shells. The boys had nearly been caught by one of them and they thought it unwise to recross the ground just then as the shells were still falling. I leaned against the ruins of this old stone building and watched the shells exploding for some minutes. Gas attacks have a most depressing and demoralizing effect on everyone. I have never made a trip with as little pleasure as that I felt at the thought of this one before me. A medical officer can, but very rarely does, refuse to go to cases. He may insist on having them brought to him as there's only one medical officer to a battalion, and his death may make it awkward for his unit till he is replaced by another surgeon from the nearest field ambulance. However, though there was no lead up to the shelling, there was no alternative but to go. So I called the runners and my corporal, and we started over. Whether it was due to the depressing effects of the gassing that we had gone through, I know not, but at any rate this was the only occasion during my service at the front on which I had a real presentiment that death was going to meet me. Distinctly do I remember expressing to myself the following inelegant sentence. I believe this is the last damn walk that I'm ever going to take. But fortunately, presentiments seldom materialize. Our trip across the field was without even a narrow escape. The shells obligingly burst not closer to us than two or three hundred yards, and we reached B Company headquarters in safety. There, a number of men were in rather a bad condition. As a matter of fact, one was dying from the effects of a shell which had struck directly into their dugout. It killed one man by impact and gave the others such a concentrated dose of the gas as to put them into a dangerous condition. As a result of this gas attack, many of our men had to go to the hospital, and those of us who escaped that were depressed for several days. Gassing weakens the morale of troops. Men do not fear to stand up and face an enemy whom they have a chance of overcoming. But they do hate dying like so many rats in a trap when death is due to a gas against which they cannot contend except by keeping out pure air and breathing through masks a mixture of carbon dioxide, poison gas, and air. Fighting with gas is cowardly and is against the rules of civilized warfare. Only a race which cares for not but success no matter how attained would employ it. True, we now retaliate in kind, but we should never have considered this method of warfare as worthy of civilized man except in self-defense. If you are fighting a wild beast of the jungle, jungle methods are in order. I, for one, believe that retaliation is the only method to combat an enemy who has shown himself ready to use any means to attain his end. CHAPTER VIII. RELIEF When one battalion goes out of the line it is relieved by another and no section or company of a battalion may go from its point of duty until a corresponding section or company has relieved it. Reliefs, except on very quiet parts of the line, are usually carried out by night to keep the enemy from being aware that they are going on. A severe shelling during a relief is always more likely to cause many casualties than at other times. Battalion HQ goes out last. As each company or section is relieved it notifies HQ and when all are relieved HQ takes its departure, having handed over all necessary documents and information to the incoming battalion. Because the human nervous system can stand only a certain amount of abuse, battalions can be kept in the line only a certain length of time, which depends upon the activity upon that front, upon the exposure of the lines to the enemy, and so the extra nervous strain, or sometimes upon the urgency of advance or retreat. A relief may be very welcome or very unwelcome depending upon the same things, but also to a certain extent upon the quality of the dugouts in the lines and the kind of accommodation outside. For strange to say, the dugouts in the lines may be preferable even with their added danger because on arriving at your rest station your battalion may find, instead of the good billets they hoped for, a few forlorn looking one inch board huts, with only one half the required accommodation, the temperature below freezing and no stoves, or you may find only tents, or you may find a virgin forest in which you are to build your own camp while the rain comes down with monotonous persistence. It is midnight in the late winter and the adjutant, Major P and I, are just leaving HQ dugout on our way to reserve billets. The trenches are very dark, the light from the stars overhead not reaching to their depths. We throw down a glare from a flashlight and a Tommy's voice angrily cries, have a heart there might, they think you're the only man in the army, doubt the glim. So we douse it and decide that the best way to keep peace in the army is to pick our way along. Gradually our eyes become accustomed to the dark and instinctively our feet keep on the trench mats as we twist and turn along the trenches. An occasional flare or star shell from the front lines aids us for a moment, but punches us into deeper darkness afterwards. Our feet slip on the semi-frozen mud of the mats over our heads in both directions, shells sing at intervals, and we hear the pounding of the guns and bursting shells before and behind us. In the quieter moments we can hear a quarter of a mile away the rattle of transport wagons on the hard road as they bring their nightly loads of ammunition and food to the dump where we are going and where we expect to find our horses. We arrive at the dump and here one might think he was in the midst of a large city market just before the dawn. Limbers, general service wagons, pack mules and men make a jumble of hurrying scurrying workers. No lights dare be shown for fear of drawing the shells of the Germans who have the range of this dump and have been shelling it during the day. Someone tells us our horses are just around a bend in the road and we make our way there and find the grooms holding the animals which have become cold and restive with waiting. Mounting we start on a five mile ride along a hard stone road dodging and picking our way among transport wagons and foot soldiers all along it. The road is bordered with trees which look like phantoms in the sighing night breeze. The stars are twinkling brightly and peacefully. To our left the big guns flash and roar and their shells sing overhead and on the other side flares are being thrown up by the battalions in the line. The north star is well up to our right so we are riding due west. We approach a corner where we turn a little northward flashing from the window of a small house on the corner is a light that should not be there. The adjutant who is a strict disciplinarian draws up his horse opposite the sentry and proceeds to strafe him for negligence. How many new words during the next few years will be the result of the war. We take the road to the right in a couple of miles in advance. We see the dim shadows of those ancient and architecturally beautiful towers on the hill of Amont Saint-Héloi. The Huns have for some days been trying to complete their ruin recently destroying a corner. At two a.m. we arrive at wooden huts just behind the towers. Our colonel who had preceded us with that fine thoughtfulness that characterized him had arranged that a battalion in some adjoining huts supply us with tea and toast, a banquet after our cold night ride. By three a.m. we are sleeping fast on the floor of our Woolsey kits as we are to arise at six a.m. for by seven a.m. the battalion is to be on the march to a wood four miles back. As the camp we are in was shelled yesterday by the Germans causing thirty casualties we had better get out of range while we can. At the appointed hour we are all up our kits are rolled and piled on a transport by our Batman and a hurried breakfast of bacon, bread, and tea partaken of. I see a few sick and send a couple to the field ambulance the battalion marches away the camp is inspected to see that all is spick and span for each battalion that must always leave a clean camp behind it and we are on the road to map location W17 C49 the only description we have of our new home as we start we pass the bodies of five dead mules victims of yesterday's shelling the roads are crowded with soldiers horses and the motor transports of all sorts it is a bright cool day Sunday by the way and a picturesque scene meets the eye in addition to the busy hurrying roadway traffic the fields show life of varying forms and pictures of interest to a seeing eye on one side in a field stands a battalion forming three sides of a square the fourth side is filled by the regimental band playing lead kindly light the Padre standing beside them it is an open air church service as far as the eye can see our military huts tents drilling soldiers and piles of ammunition but in the distance overtopping all is the spire of a church dumbly supplicating us to send our thoughts upward to the prince of peace as everything on earth seems to tell us to give our minds to the gods of war and sailing high above the church steeple our two military aeroplanes like guardian angels ready to protect their loved ones beyond them in the dim distance hangs the lazy sausage shaped form of an observation balloon above the earth on the earth and under the earth one sees war war war here and there one passes white limestone farmhouses of France with red tiled roofs the buildings forming a square about the court the ladder is filled to overflowing with its ever present pile of manure at one side of which always stands the well raised it is true a little above the manure dump but built of brick and mortar through which in many cases permeate the fluids from this cesspool in the center a medical friend of mine once told me that the peasant farmer objects to chloride of lime being put on the manure as it gives a disagreeable taste to the water then as far as the eye can see the fields that are not employed for military purposes are tilled and cultivated how it is done is something very difficult to understand for one never sees anybody working in them except an aged man and woman or a young child those in the prime of youthful manhood are all fighting for their adored country la belle France on the corner of one of these cultivated areas stands one of those small stone shrines so common in France this one was erected so it said in carved letters in eighteen sixteen to the honor of his beloved child who genie de la tré by her father the date unconsciously carries one back to the great Napoleon if he could rise from his magnificent tomb in the embolide and look about him in the midst of a war which dwarfs his famous battles into insignificance what would his thoughts be no longer would he see his famous guard on prancing steeds and with flowing plumes charging a bristling British squares as they did in his last great fight at Waterloo he would find them in somber semi-invisible garb standing shoulder to shoulder with their one time hated enemies the latter clad in plain khaki both facing the same foe the Prussian whom he had once humbled by marching into Berlin but who had later helped the British defeat him at Waterloo and many he would see groveling in the earth in trenches dugouts and tunnels like so many earthworms some few he would discover who with the French love of the spectacular are sailing thousands of feet in the air or leagues under the surface of the sea we passed through a village a comp plan la belle where we go into the town major to inquire about water supplies for our men the town major a Canadian of 50 reminds one of us of an old friend of the same name in Chicago one of the many Canadians who has made good very good in the United States it is a brother so it is being continually shown that this war has made the world an even smaller place than it was before our information obtained we move on to our new camp virgin forest one half mile above Champlain la belle where there is no sign of tent hut or dwelling of any kind but the men are already lolling happily on the bare ground ignoring the pounding of our guns a few miles north and inhaling with anticipatory pleasure the fragrant odors of stew steaming in the battalion field cookers just below the brow of the hill the busy work of turning an open forest into a camp to be occupied by 1000 men for a week or more is already in progress the tents have not arrived but brigade has promised to get them along shortly plans are being made as to where each company is to be where orderly room will be most convenient what is the best position for the HQ and the other officers where the cookhouses cookers watercars latrines refuse dumps canteen batsman's quarters medical inspection tent shoemaker tailor transport department and the 101 other departments and sections are to be located you see it is not as easy as it sounds to take a thousand men and encamp them in a proper manner gradually the chaos is subdued and as tents and half-built huts come they are quickly placed in their proper position while it is all in progress one is likely to stumble over the kernel who has stolen half an hour from his busy work to sit on the ground and eat some bully beef biscuits and chocolate and who insists on everyone else doing the same or to bump into the corpulent form of the rsm regimental sergeant major who is everywhere directing everything in the way that only a rsm can do though his crossed words is usually grumbled through a smiling ready face for his heart is proportionate to his large size the day advances night is coming on and the tents have arrived only in sufficient numbers to cover one-third of the officers and men fortunately the sun still shines though the march air is getting colder a sleep in the open air promises to require extra blankets which do not exist in the camp however everyone smiles and there is at least a gradually though slowly increasing amount of cover for the men of the battalion some of the men wiser perhaps through previous light predicaments are choosing the sheltered side of a small hill and are digging shelters for themselves over which they are putting coverings of bows as it turns out they are wise for in the end only sufficient coverings come for two-thirds of the battalion and consequently a few officers and quite a few men sleep in the open with only a blanket and their overcoats for covering and nature the deceitful jade who had smiled kindly upon us all day and promised us a dry though cold night about midnight and for two days succeeding poured torrents of rain down upon us the sick parade grew larger and the ground became lakes of mud the cook houses so called which were only fires built in hollows had their fire so drowned that we all ate primitive diet as well as lived most closely to nature everyone as usual had his consolation in laughing at the discomforts of the others till order came out of chaos in the days that followed end of chapter eight