Private Peat Part 11

To-day, it is not necessary to go to Ypres, to Namur, to Liege, to Verdun, or to any of the bombarded cities of Belgium and France to see the ruin that has been wrought by war among the people. It is the populace who suffer, even in greater degree than do the fighting men. They must give way in every instance before the irresistible barrier of martial law. It is the old men, the women, the children, the babies and the physically imperfect who must bear the brunt of dreadfulness.

Go to any of the cities of France, a hundred or more miles from the firing line. Go to Rouen, to Paris, to the smaller inland towns, to St. Omer, to Aubreville, and there is war.

The streets and boulevards, which a few years since were gay with a laughing crowd of joyous-hearted men and women, youths and maidens, to-day are gloomy, with the shadow of sorrow and death on them. On a conservative estimate it will be found that in all the towns and cities of France, one in three women will be dressed in black.

The French woman carries through life the tradition of the veil. She is christened, and over her baby face there lies a white veil. She is confirmed, and a veil drapes her childish head. She is married, and a trailing lace veil half conceals her happy smiles. She mourns, and a heavy veil of black c.r.a.pe covers her from head to foot.

We of the Canadians learned to know the wonderful emotion of the French. As we marched along the streets we would see a Frenchwoman approaching us. She recognized the strange uniform of an Ally and her eyes would sparkle, and perchance she'd greet us with a fluttering handkerchief. The shadow of a smile would cross her face; she was glad to see us; she wanted to welcome us. And then she would remember, remember that she had lost her man--her husband, her son, her sweetheart. He had been just as we, strong and virile. He had gone forth to a victory that now he was never to see on earth. His had been the supreme sacrifice. She would pa.s.s us, and the tears would come to her eyes, and we'd salute those tears--for France.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Over the top]

And the men, what of them? There are no men. You will see old men, shaken and weak; possibly they have experienced the German as he was in 1870, and they know. You will see boys, eager strong boys, who impatiently await the call to arms. You will see young men who now look old. You will see them blind, and led about by a younger brother or sister. You will see the permanently crippled and those that wait for death, a slow and lingering death from the Hun's poisonous gases.

[Ill.u.s.tration: With the best of luck]

It is no uncommon sight to see the peasantry of France and Belgium, the old and young women, the children and the very old men, working in their fields and on their tiny farms, less than a mile from the trenches. It is their home. It is France or it is Belgium, and love of country and that which is theirs is stronger than fear of death. Some one of them may be blown to pieces as he works; it makes no difference. They do not leave as long as it is possible to remain, or as long as the Allied armies will permit them to stay.

Their houses may be leveled, they may only find shelter in a half ruined cellar. Often they may go hungry, but always there is a grim determination to stick to their own, to till the ground which has kept them, which has kept their parents and great-grandparents, and which they mean shall keep their children when victory, which they know is inevitable, is complete.

They have a wonderful faith.

The casualties of the French army have never been made public. We do not know them. It may be that they will never be told to a curious world.

France may have had her body crushed almost beyond endurance, but the unspeakable Hun--the barbarian, the crusher of hope and love and ideals--has not even made a dent on the wonderful spirit of France.

France is superb. In the parlance of the man in the street, we all "take off our hats" to this valiant country.

I could tell of the most horrible things possible for human mind to conceive. I have seen things that, put in type, would sicken the reader. I do not want to tell of these things here, evidence of them can be had from any official doc.u.ment or blue-book. And yet, in justice to Belgium, I must tell some of the least dreadful of the things I have seen and only those that have come to me through personal experience. I do not tell from hearsay, and I tell the truth without exaggeration.

In common with thousands of other Canadian and Imperial soldiers I saw the evacuation and destruction of Ypres. On the morning of April 21, 1915, we marched along the Ypres-Menin road, which road was the key to Calais, to Paris, to London and to New York. We marched along in the early hours of the morning, just after dawn. To our left pa.s.sed a continuous stream of refugees. We looked toward them as we went by. We saluted as they pa.s.sed, but many of us had dimmed vision.

We had heard of German atrocities. We had seen an isolated case or two as we marched from town to town and village to village. We had not paid a great deal of attention to them, as we had considered such things the work of some drunken German soldier who had run riot and defied the orders of the officers. Though we had certainly seen one or more cases that had impressed us very deeply. The case I cited earlier in this book never left my thoughts. But here on the king's highway, we saw German atrocities on exhibition for the first time. I say exhibition, and public exhibition, because it was the first time we had seen atrocities in bulk--in numbers--in hundreds.

Ypres had been destroyed in seven hours, after a continuous bombardment from one thousand German guns. It was a city of the dead. The military authorities of the Allies told the civilians they must leave. They had to go, there was no alternative. The liberation they had hoped for was in sight, but their road to it was of a roughness unspeakable.

There was the grandfather in that procession, and the grandmother,--sometimes she was a crippled old body who could not walk.

Sometimes she was wheeled in a barrow surrounded by a few bundles of household treasure. Sometimes a British wagon would pa.s.s piled high with old women and sick, to whom the soldiers were giving a lift on their way.

There was the mother in that procession. Sometimes she would have a bundle, sometimes she would have a basket with a few broken pieces of food. There was a young child, the baby hardly able to toddle and clinging to the mother's skirts. There was the young brother, the little fellow, whimpering a little perhaps at the noise and confusion and terror which his tiny brain could not grasp. There was the baby, the baby which used to be plump and smiling and round and pinky white, now held convulsively by the mother to her breast, its little form thin and worn because of lack of nourishment.

There was no means of feeding these thousands of helpless ones. Their only means of sustenance was from the charity of the British and French soldiers, who shared rations with them.

And there was sister, the daughter--sister--sister. At sight of these young girls--from thirteen up to twenty and over--we learned, if we had not learned before, that this is a war in which every decent man must fight.

Some Americans and Canadians may not want to go overseas; they may be opposed to fighting; they may think they are not needed. Let them once see what we saw that April morning and nothing in the world could keep them at home.

They dragged along with heads low, and eyes seeking the ground in a shame not of their own making. I am conservative when I say that one in four of the hundreds of young girls who walked along in that sad crowd had a baby, or was about to have one.

And that was not the only horror of their situation. Many of them had one or the other arm off at the elbow. They had not only been ruined, but mutilated by their barbarous enemies.

That evening we camped just outside the city of Ypres. We rested all night, and the next day we went into action. During the afternoon of April twenty-second the Germans, for the first time in the history of warfare, used poisonous gas. And they used it against us as we lay there ready to protect the Ypres salient.

CHAPTER XII

CANADIANS--THAT'S ALL

Less than three months before this we were raw recruits. We were considered greenhorns and absolutely undisciplined. We had had little of trench experience. At Neuve Chapelle we had "stood by." At Hill 60 we had watched the fun. But our discipline, our real mettle, had not yet been put to the test.

That evening of the twenty-second of April when we marched out from Ypres, little did any of us realize that within the next twenty-four hours more than one-half of our total effectives were to be no more.

I feel sure that our commanders must have been nervous. They must have wondered and asked themselves, "Will the boys stand it?" "How will they come out of the test?"

We were about to be thrown into the fiercest and bitterest battle of the war. There were no other troops within several days' march of us. There was no one to back us up. There was no one else, should we fail, to take our place. "Canadians! It's up to you!"

I could tell of several stirring things that happened to other battalions during that night, but I am only telling of what I saw myself, and it will suffice to write of one most stirring thing which befell the Third.

As we crossed the Yser Ca.n.a.l we marched in a dogged and resolute silence.

No man can tell what were the thoughts of his comrade. We have no bands, nor bugles, nor music when marching into action. We dare not even smoke. In dark and quiet we pa.s.s steadily ahead. There is only the continued m.u.f.fled tramp--tramp--of hundreds of feet encased in heavy boots.

To the far right of us and to the far left sh.e.l.ls were falling, bursting and brilliantly lighting up the heavens for a lurid moment. In our immediate sector there were no sh.e.l.ls. It was all the more dark and all the more silent, for the noise and uproar and blazing flame to right and left.

We were on rising ground now. Up and up steadily we went. We reached the top of the grade, when suddenly from out of the pit of darkness ahead of us there came a high explosive sh.e.l.l. It dropped in the middle of our battalion. It struck where the machine gun section was placed, and annihilated them almost to a man.

Then it was that our mettle stood the test. Then it was that we proved the words Canadian and Man synonymous. Not one of us wavered; not one of us swerved to right or left, to front or back. We kept on. There was hardly one who lost in step. The commanders whispered in the darkness, "Close up the ranks." The men behind those who had fallen jumped across the bodies of their comrades lying p.r.o.ne, and joined in immediately behind those in the forward rows.

The dead and wounded lay stretched where they had fallen. Coming behind us were the stretcher-bearers and the hospital corps. We knew our comrades would have attention. This was a grim business. We pressed on.

There was a supreme test of discipline. It was our weighing time in the balance of the world war, and we proved ourselves not wanting. We were Canadians--that's all.

That afternoon the gas came over on us. The Germans put gas across on us because they hated us most. It is a compliment to be hated by the Germans.

Extreme hatred from a German in the field shows that the hated are the most effective. They hated the French most at first, they hated the Imperial British, they hated us; they have hated the English again; soon, when the United States comes to her full effectiveness, she will take her place in the front rank of the hated.

We Canadians were a puzzle to them. When we went into the trenches at first, the enemy would call across the line to us, "What have you come over here to fight us for? What business is it of yours? Why did you not stay back home in Canada and attend to your own affairs, and not b.u.t.t into something that does not concern you? If you had stayed at home in your own country, WHEN WE CAME OVER AND TOOK CANADA, we would have treated you all right. Now that you have interfered, we are going to get you some day and get you right."

Yes; when they came over and took Canada. That was the very reason we were fighting. We wanted to keep our own part of the empire for ourselves. It is ours absolutely, and we had no intention that Germany should own it. We knew exactly what the Hohenzollern planned to do. If France were subdued, if England were beaten on her own ground, then Canada would be a prize of war. We preferred to fight overseas, in a country which already had been devastated, rather than carry ruin and devastation into our own land, where alone we would not have had the slightest chance in the world for beating Germany.

In the front lines of the Ypres salient was the Third Brigade, made up of Canadian Highlanders, whom the Germans, since that night have nicknamed "The Ladies from h.e.l.l." In this brigade were men from parts of Nova Scotia, Montreal, from Hamilton, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver.

To the left of these lay the Second Brigade of Infantry. These were men for the most part from the West. There was the Fifth, commonly known as the "Disappointed Fifth," from Regina, Moose Jaw and Saskatoon. There was the Eighth, nicknamed by the Germans "The Little Black Devils from Winnipeg."

The Tenth, the famous "Fighting Tenth," with boys from Southern Alberta, mainly Medicine Hat and Calgary and Lethbridge. And there was the Seventh of British Columbia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: POSITIONS BEFORE AND AFTER SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES APRIL 1915]

It was the Second Brigade which the First was supporting. To the left of the Eighth Battalion, which was the extreme Canadian left wing, there were Zouaves and Turcos. These were black French Colonials. To these unfortunates, probably the Canadians owe their near disaster.

In the far distance we saw a cloud rise as though from the earth. It was a greeny-red color, and increased in volume as it rolled forward. It was like a mist rising, and yet it hugged the ground, rose five or six feet, and penetrated to every crevice and dip in the ground.