From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade Part 2

Spy fever was rampant, and such experts as Begbie Lyte were constantly in demand to investigate lights that flickered in any manner that a vivid imagination might possibly take for signalling.

At other points practical jokes were played, such as driving a calf at night in the direction of the sentry. The soldier receiving no answer to his challenge would fire in the direction of the noise, and a loud laugh would greet him. Once or twice, however, the sentry waited for the laugh and fired in that direction, so that this variety of joke soon lost its popularity.

Once, however, mobilisation had been ordered the militiamen were replaced by men who had volunteered for active service. The armouries began to hum with activity. In the West it was hard to find accommodation for the men who came from isolated homesteads and lonely ranches, some even from the Arctic Circle, to enlist. The West still continues to supply the bulk of our recruits, due largely to the fact that the majority are, if not British born, at least the sons of British fathers, and consequently felt the call more personally than the sons of families four or five generations in the country. Quebec, from which province one would expect the most owing to the ties of race and language with our Allies, has been frankly disappointing, although certain exclusively French-Canadian battalions have done, and are continuing to do, as good work as any on the Western front.

A week or two dragged on before the actual order to depart for the big concentration camps came, and various conjectures were made as to their location. Petewawa was suggested as one, but given up as too isolated.

Niagara, Barriefield, Three Rivers, and other "annual" sites were other favourites, but each had some objection, for no concentration such as thirty thousand men had been held in the history of Canada.

Eventually, however, we learned that one large camp was to be formed at Val Cartier. Except that Val Cartier was in Quebec, no one knew anything of this little hamlet.

Orders came thick and fast ordering this equipment to be worn and that to be left behind. Some days rifles were to be taken and greatcoats left in stores, and next day the rifles were to be left and greatcoats were to be taken. The result was that some of the telegrams went astray, and commanding officers at the last minute ordered what equipment they thought most suitable to be worn.

The Umpteenth Battalion took down the leather harness that had adorned its armoury walls for many a year and spent an anxious day fitting it together, Begbie Lyte and the other officers who had volunteered for the front flitting from one group of contestants to another.

At last every man had a working knowledge of the fifty odd buckles and a hazy idea as to where the straps were supposed to cross his chest and where not. The colonel looked with pride on this difficulty overcome and said, "Thank Heaven! we will probably get a more modern outfit as soon as we strike camp." Alas! We buckled and unbuckled those straps and rolled and unrolled our greatcoats for half a year before the new kit was handed out.

This was only one of the many steps that led up to that final day when, with the band playing such cheerful airs as "The Girl I left behind me"

and "Will ye no come back again," the active service volunteers of the Umpteenth Battalion left their native town.

The way to the station is but dimly remembered as a haze of faces, spasmodic attempts at cheering, and the waving of many handkerchiefs.

Much handshaking and the sudden thrusting of presents into arms already full prefaced the actual pulling out of the train.

The officers gathered on the back of the last car and watched the white faces of the crowd dwindle to pin points, and then a curve hid town and people alike from view.

It was less lonely inside the car, where were officers of another battalion whose men were in the fore part of the train. The elder men talked in low, serious tones as befitted those who knew something of what lay before them.

To Lyte and the younger subalterns it seemed as though they were on the threshold of life's Great Adventure, as indeed they were.

But they were not facing a war of chivalrous deeds such as they imagined.

Alas for our ideals! war now appears in its true light, as the game of commerce played on a larger scale with human lives as p.a.w.ns in the place of dollars and cents!

And as for chivalry, how can it live in the midst of machine-guns, asphyxiating gases, and liquid flames?

CHAPTER IV

VAL CARTIER

A more picturesque site for a camp than Val Cartier could hardly be imagined, situated as it was among the foothills of the Laurentian mountains along the banks of the Jacques Cartier River.

A gentle slope, dry sandy soil, and plenty of water made it ideal from a sanitary standpoint, and with the ample manoeuvre grounds available, the shower sprays, and running water piped throughout the camp, Val Cartier was the peer of any camp the Canadians have yet seen.

But when we tumbled out of the train in the early morning there was nothing to show the existence of a military camp except one lonely bell-tent guarding the railway platform and a pair of wheel-tracks disappearing in the clumps of second-growth cedars.

Following these tracks we came upon an opening on either side of the road in which men laboured at clearing away the underbrush. The vivid colours of the jerseys in which they were clad told the world that those on the one side were students from McGill, while those on the other clad in blue and white represented 'Varsity (Toronto). Further along the red, yellow, and blue of Queen's University showed where their University Field Company was at work. The same spirit of compet.i.tion that existed on the football field now kept the three units working at top speed.

A patch of land that one day was covered with cedars would next day be bare of all but stumps, the brushwood blazing merrily in huge fires.

Next day the stumps in turn would be gone and by evening the new area would be covered with tents.

Already some hundreds of tents had been erected on each side of what was to be the main street of the camp. A ditching machine pantingly laboured on one side of the road and dug as much in a day as fifty men. In the ditch already made on the other side pipes had been laid and running water was available.

Showers had been erected for each company, and, most welcome of all, the advance party greeted us with a flourish of dirty ap.r.o.ns and ladles and the joyful cry of "skillet."

During the afternoon greatcoats were received, and very necessary they were, for when we rose next morning ice had formed in our pails, and the trees on the mountain side were beginning to turn red.

Long before we left the mountain sides were a wild revel of colour, reds, yellows, and browns predominating, where the frost had touched the leaves. Particularly brilliant were the shot-scarred trees that stood on the slopes forming the stop-b.u.t.ts of the rifle-ranges.

These ranges are worthy of special mention, comprising as they did targets for fifteen hundred men.

The method of construction was simplicity itself. A deep ditch had been dug and the earth thrown up like an ordinary trench to protect the marker. Strong posts had been erected about six feet apart to carry the targets, which took the form of squares of pulpboard mounted on a lever pivoted to the upright. The weight of the target held it behind the b.u.t.t, and it was brought into view by pulling a short piece of rope attached to the free end of the lever.

Crude as this arrangement was, it served the purpose admirably, and daily we trudged out toward the mountain, around the foot of which this trench wound much as the German line does around the foot of Messines Hill, and fired ragged volleys into the re-echoing hill sides.

In only two ways could the training have been improved, and neither of these two was practicable under the circ.u.mstances. Better checking of the target registers and fire control would have necessitated officers trained better in musketry, and such officers were not available, and had the latest pattern ammunition in clips been obtainable instead of the old square-toed bullet wrapped in paper packages, more practice in rapid fire--the English Army's Mad Minute--could have been had.

But Sam Hughes had to work with the material at hand, and from an army of men who had, in the majority, never fired a service rifle in their lives, he formed an army that he described as being "the finest shooting army in the world."

Drill was not by any means neglected, and there were few idle hours in camp, even moonlight nights being eagerly seized upon by battalion commanders for extra work.

Daily fresh drafts from battalions arrived and were formed into new composite battalions, and daily the proportion of men in old civilian clothing grew less.

Two reviews were held, after one of which the Honourable Sam had many things to say to the officers. He told them that every officer, no matter what political gender, would have an equal chance in the great struggle for a place on the contingent, for instead of the one thousand officers asked for some fifteen hundred officers were actually in camp.

Sam spake yet other homilies to the officers, and his address, delivered from a mound on which he and his staff were drawn up, was irreverently referred to around camp as the "Sermon on the Mount." A story is also told that one of his aides suggested that all could not hear him.

"That's all right," he is credited with replying; "they can all see me!"

However, his words had a beneficial effect on all who heard them, and when two weeks later another review was held and His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught inspected the contingent it was announced that the First Canadian Division was ready to proceed over seas.

Begbie Lyte and other signalling officers were summoned over to headquarters one day and received mysterious instructions from an officer in naval uniform.

Two days later, on the 22nd of September, the ---- Battalion embarked on a troops.h.i.+p, and after a wild evening's pleasure at the Chateau Frontenac the writer, Begbie Lyte, and some others sought the narrow confines of the s.h.i.+p. The rhythmic throb of the propeller woke them some hours later as the s.h.i.+p moved out to anchor in mid stream.

CHAPTER V

THE CONVOY

For two days we lay at anchor opposite the Citadel of Quebec and bemoaned the fate that separated us from the twinkling lights of the Chateau Frontenac and the Dufferin Terrace. Then one evening the throb of the propeller drew the crowd from the saloons to the decks and we watched the lights fade away in the night. From the forts long fingers of light followed us down stream, and blinking lights here and there sent us farewell greetings. Up on the bridge we could hear the clatter of the signal lamps, and the sooty odour of petroleum smoke hung in the calm air around us. Begbie Lyte was on the job and became an important unit in our little company. Through him alone would we get news of the outside world for some weeks to come.

Nearing Father Point, below Quebec, where normally the pilot is dropped or taken on when one is leaving or proceeding to Canada, the s.h.i.+p's officers pointed out a small twinkling light that marked the grave of the ill-fated _Empress of Ireland_. We had seen the collier _Storstadt_ that sent her to her doom while at anchor off the Citadel, and were much impressed.

As night wore on the groups on the deck became smaller until the s.h.i.+p's officers alone remained, and with darkened port-holes we slipped on through the night. A distinct freshness in the wind spoke of a change around us. We were nearing salt water. Next day we anch.o.r.ed in Gaspe Basin. Already some six or eight s.h.i.+ps lay there.