Private Peat Part 14

"I think it is possible that you do not, all of you, quite realize that if we had retired on the evening of the twenty-second of April when our Allies fell back from the gas and left our flank quite open, the whole of the Seventeenth and Twenty-eighth Divisions would probably have been cut off, certainly they would not have got away a gun or a vehicle of any sort, and probably not more than half the infantry. This is what our commander-in-chief meant when he telegraphed as he did: 'The Canadians undoubtedly saved the situation.' My lads, if ever men had a right to be proud in this world, you have.

"I know my military history pretty well, and I can not think of an instance, especially when the cleverness and determination of the enemy is taken into account, in which troops were placed in such a difficult position; nor can I think of an instance in which so much depended on the standing fast of one division.

"You will remember the last time I spoke to you, just before you went into the trenches at Sailly, now over two months ago, I told you about my old regiment--the Royal West Kents--having gained a reputation for not budging from the trenches, no matter how they were attacked. I said then that I was quite sure that in a short time the army out here would be saying the same of you. I little thought--we, none of us thought--how soon those words would come true. But now, to-day, not only the army out here, but all Canada, all England, and all the Empire, is saying it of you.

"The share each unit has taken in earning this reputation is no small one.

"I have three pages of congratulatory telegrams from His Majesty the King downward which I will read to you, with also a very nice letter from our army commander, Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien.

"Now, I doubt if any divisional commander, or any division ever had so many congratulatory telegrams and messages as these, and remember they are not merely polite and sentimental ones; they express just what the senders feel.

"There is one word I would say to you before I stop. You have made a reputation second to none gained in this war, but remember, no man can live on his reputation, he must keep on adding to it. That you will do so I feel just as sure as I did two months ago when I told you that I knew you would make a reputation when the opportunity came.

"I am now going to shake hands with your officers, and I do so wanting you to feel that I am shaking hands with each one of you, as I would actually do if the time permitted.

"No--we will not have any cheering now--we will keep that until you have added to your reputation, as I know you will."

And there was no cheering. We turned away--the few men of us left whole in those scattered ranks--our eyes tear-dimmed in memory of those comrades whose lives had gone out; but our hearts ready to answer the call wherever it might lead us.

The world to-day knows what the Canadian boys have done. We have more than added to our reputation.

Right after this terrible sc.r.a.p at Ypres came Givenchy and Festubert, and then we held the line at Ploegsteert for a whole year, fighting fiercely at St. Eloi, and stopping them again at Sanctuary Wood.

In the summer of 1916 fourteen thousand of us went down before German cannon, but still they did not break our lines. This was known as the third battle of Ypres.

From Ypres we went to the Somme, and it was on the Somme that we met our Australian cousins who jokingly greeted us with the statement "We're here to finish what you started," and we fired back, "Too bad you hadn't finished what you started down in Gallipoli!"

It was not very long before both were engaged in that terrible battle of the Somme, where to Canadian arms fell the honor of taking the village of Courcellette. We plugged right on and soon we put the "Vim" into Vimy, and took Vimy Ridge. As I write we are marking time in front of Lens.

At Ypres we started our great casualty lists with ten thousand. To-day over one hundred twenty-five thousand Canadian boys have fallen, and there are over eighteen thousand who will never come back to tell their story.

If the generals of the British Army were proud of us in 1915, I wonder how they feel to-day?

CHAPTER XIV

"THE BEST O' LUCK--AND GIVE 'EM h.e.l.l!"

Imagine a bright crisp morning in late September. The sun rises high and the beams strike with comforting warmth even into the fire-trench where we gather in groups to catch its every glint.

We feel good on such a morning. We clean up a bit, for things are quiet--that is, fairly quiet. Only a few sh.e.l.ls are flying, there is little or no rifle fire and n.o.body is getting killed, n.o.body is even getting plugged.

The whole long day pa.s.ses quietly. We are almost content with our lot. We laugh a good deal, we joke, we play the eternal penny ante, and possibly the letters come.

Just before stand-to at sundown the quiet will be broken. The artillery behind our lines will open up with great activity. We notice that the big sh.e.l.ls only are being used and we notice that they are concentrating entirely on the German front line, immediately ahead and to the right and left of where we have our position. We are more than a little interested.

There is decidedly something in the wind. We wait, but nothing happens. We have stand-to and get our reliefs for guard.

Every man has his bayonet fixed for the night. We give it a little extra polish. It may be needed soon. There is no outward show of nervousness. No man speaks to his neighbor of his immediate thoughts. We begin to smoke a little more rapidly, perhaps. We might have had a cigarette an hour during the heavy sh.e.l.ling of the day. During the night we will increase to one every half-hour, every twenty minutes. We light a f.a.g, take a few puffs and throw it away. That is the only evidence of nerves.

We are in a state of complete ignorance as to what the outcome of this sh.e.l.ling may be. We have seen it just as severe before and nothing but a skirmish result. Some of us have seen sh.e.l.ling of the same intensity and have gone over the top and into a terrible melange. We are always kept in ignorance; no commands and no orders are given. Did we know for hours ahead that at such and such a time we would go over the top, our nerves could hardly stand the strain. The noise, the terrific noise of our artillery bombarding the German trenches is hard enough on our nerves; what it must be on the nerves of the enemy is beyond conception. We do not wonder that in these latter days they fall on their knees and yell "_Kamerad_!"

As a rule a charge takes place just before dawn, when the gray cold light of morning is struggling up from the East. All night we are occupied according to our individual temperaments. Some are able to sleep even in such a racket. The great majority of us are writing letters. There are always a few last things to be said to the home-folks, a few small possessions we want to will in special ways. We hand our letters to an officer or to some special chum. If this is to be our last time over--if it is to be our last charge--the officer or chum will see to it, if he lives, or the stretcher-bearers or the chaplains, if he doesn't, that the small treasures go back home to the old folks.

Just before dawn there is a difference in the character of the sh.e.l.ling.

The heavy sh.e.l.ls are falling farther back on German reserves and lighter artillery is being used on the enemy front line. The position lies some three hundred yards from the enemy front.

The light sh.e.l.ls sweep close overhead as they go by our trench. We have to hug the sides close; sometimes the vacuum is so great that it will carry off a cap; if we are not careful it may suck up a head or lift us completely off our feet.

This curtain of fire continues for hours; it varies in direction now and then, but never in intensity. There is a controlling force over this tremendous bombardment. To my mind the most important man on the battle-field is he who holds the ordering of the bombardment--the observation officer. He must know everything, see everything, but must never be seen. During a heavy bombardment he works in conjunction with another observation officer. They are hidden away in any old place; it may be a ruined chimney, it may be a tree which is still left standing, or it may be in some hastily built up haystack. He controls the entire artillery in action on his special front, and he holds the lives of thousands of men in the hollow of his hand. One tiniest miscalculation and hundreds of us pay the price.

He is cool, imperturbable, calculating, ready in any emergency, good-tempered, deliberate and yet with the power to act instantly. At times he has command over a magnificent number of invectives!

As the minutes pa.s.s and the day lightens we smoke a f.a.g every five minutes, every three minutes. The trench is filled with the blue gray smoke of thousands of cigarettes, lighted, puffed once, thrown away. It soothes our nerves. It gives us something to do with our hands. It takes our mind off the impending clash.

If we make an attack in broad daylight, which is seldom done except under a special emergency, the only command to charge will be the click, click, click of bayonets going into place all along the line. But charges are mostly made at gray-dawn, when bayonets are already fixed. Suddenly, away down the line we catch sight of one of our men climbing over the parapet.

Then trench ladders are fixed, and in a twinkling every man of us is over the top with: "The best o' luck--and give 'em h.e.l.l!"

We crawl out over the open. We reach our own barbed wire entanglements. We creep through them, round them, and out to No Man's Land. We are in it now for good and all.

The enemy is now concentrating his fire on our reserves. He knows that we have not had sufficient men in the front line trench to be of great effect.

He knows that we can not fit them in there. He knows that the moment we have cleared the top of the parapet hundreds of men have poured from the communication trenches into our places. He knows that for miles back men are ma.s.sed as thick as they can stand in the reserve trenches. His object is to destroy our reserves and not the immediate trench in front of him.

We follow the same plan. For, as we advance in short sharp rushes, the observation officer, who never for a moment relaxes his hold on the situation, flashes back by telegraph or field telephone the command to the artillery lying miles away to raise their curtain of fire. They do so, and sh.e.l.ls fall on the German reserves, while we press forward, teeth bared and cold steel gleaming grayly, to take the front lines. We leap the parapet of the German trench. We spot our man and bear down on him. We clean out the dugouts and haul away the cowering officers, and already we are straightening and strengthening the German trench.

Behind us come wave on wave of our reserves. The second will take the second trench of the enemy; the third, the third, and so on. Then we consolidate our position, and Fritz is a sad and sorry boy.

That is the way it should work, but in the early days of the war we used to find this very difficult. We of the front line would charge and take our trench. We would get there and not a German to be seen! He would be beating it down his communication trenches, or what was left of them, as hard as he could go. We were supposed to stay in the front trench of the enemy. Well, it was simply against human nature, against the human nature of the First Canadian boys at any rate. We may have been out there for months and not had a chance to see a German. And had been wis.h.i.+ng and waiting for this very opportunity. We would see Fritz disappear round a traverse and we simply could not stand still and let him go, or let the other fellow get him. We were bound to go after him. This was really our traditional weakness. Often-times we went too far in our eagerness to capture the Hun, and were unable to hold all that we got.

In the early days, too, we charged in open formation. Certainly we lost, in the first instance, fewer men by that method, but when we reached the enemy trench, took it, and had established ourselves therein, we were rarely strong enough in numbers to repulse the almost certain counter-attacks that came a few minutes or even an hour or so later.

We have altered this method now. We attack, not in the close formation, shoulder to shoulder, of the German, but in a formation which is a variation of his. We attack in groups of twenty or thirty men, who are placed shoulder to shoulder. If a sh.e.l.l comes over one group, it is obliterated, to be sure, but suppose no sh.e.l.l comes; then several such groups will reach the enemy lines, and Hans has not got the ghost of a chance once we get to close quarters. He has not the glimmer of a chance in a counter-attack when we have sufficient men to hold on to what we have gained.

On the other hand a German charge on our lines is a pretty sight. They advance at a dog-trot. They come shoulder to shoulder, each man almost touching his neighbor. They are in perfect alignment to start, and they lift their feet practically in exact time one with the other. Unlike us, they shoot as they advance. We have a cartridge in our magazine, but we have the safety catch on. We dare not shoot as we advance because our officers are always ahead, always cheering the boys forward. The German officer is always behind. He drives his men.

They shoot from the hip, but in that way their fire is never very effective. As they advance it is practically impossible to miss them, no matter how bad a shot any of us might be. We get fifteen rounds per minute from our rifles and our orders are to shoot low and to full capacity.

In the attacks of the enemy which I have seen they certainly have been brave. One must give them their due. It takes courage to advance in face of rifle fire, machine gun fire and artillery sh.e.l.ls, in this close formation.

Wave after wave of them come across in their field gray-blue uniforms and they never cower. One wave will be mowed down and another will quicken the pace a trifle and take its place. One man will go down and another will step into the gap. They are like a vast animated machine.

In one attack which we repulsed I am conservative when I say that they were lying dead and wounded three and four deep and yet they attacked again and again without faltering, only to be driven back to defeat in the end.

This war is not over yet by a long shot, and I should like to offer some advice to the boys who are going over from this continent. Our officers know better than we. The generals and aides who have been working on the problem, on the strategy and tactics during the three years gone by, are more qualified to conduct the war than the private who has lately joined.

If you are told to stay in a certain place, then stay there. If you are told to dig in, you are a bad soldier if you don't dig and dig quickly. You are only a nuisance as long as you question authority. It does not pay. The boys of the First Division learned by experience. Do as you're told. The heads are taking no undue risks. Your life is as valuable to them as it is to you. They won't let you lose it unnecessarily. Get ahead and obey.

There is no need to lose your individuality. The vast difference between us and the enemy soldier is that we can think for ourselves should occasion arise; we can act on our own responsibility or we can lead if the need be.