From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade Part 7

"Oh, monsieur speaks French," she answered, quite ignoring the mess-tin he held out. "Why did you not tell me?"--this last with an accusing glance at A----, the senior subaltern. Lyte began to deny all knowledge of the language, and she suddenly swung into English. "Nevair mind, I speak b.l.o.o.d.y good English," and then amidst our whoops of applause she demanded "It ees good? What!"

Lee came in one morning in a great state of excitement, his rich brogue being augmented with the news he brought. It seemed that on going up to his guns that morning he had found the farm there, till then occupied by a Belgian family, vacated and the white half-door--so familiar in all peasant countries where they keep pigs--placed lozenge-wise on the red roof. A hasty search revealed a partly burnt map and other papers of a military nature, and a German plane was already buzzing aloft. He had hurriedly withdrawn his guns; but siege guns take time to move, and before they could get away the sh.e.l.ls were upon them and one gun crew had been practically wiped out. He was much excited, as became a man who had seen his first death.

We, too, had pa.s.sed a very strenuous night. The Germans had commenced another attack on our line, using the gas again. We were wondering how much good the little respirators we were carrying would be, and the answer came soon enough.

As we moved forward we met men falling back gasping, coughing and sobbing, and the stink of their clothing was of h.e.l.l's own reek, a choky mixture of chlorine and sulphur. "It's not war, mate; it's b.l.o.o.d.y murder!" was all one man gasped as he threw himself coughing on the ground, where he died before we moved on. It was not a pretty sight, and more than one rifle-b.u.t.t was grasped the tighter and more than one oath sworn to get at the fiends who had let loose this vile poison, against which the only protection we had was a little pad of gauze to fasten over the mouth and nose after soaking in water from our water-bottles.

These had been supplied by the thousand as soon as the authorities made known their wants by the women and children of England, and, feeble though this protection was, these simple little pads saved many lives that week.

But it was not our fate to meet the enemy again while in the salient.

After continuing our march about another quarter-mile we lined a roadside and commenced digging another trench.

Here we lay and s.h.i.+vered all night, the men crouching in the trench, every fourth man alert and watching, the officers lying on the ground behind in sh.e.l.l holes or walking up and down swinging their arms and trying to keep warm. It was only one night of many.

The Germans continued to discharge gas against our line until May 15th, when they retook Hill 60. The bitter struggle of the past three weeks had begun as a mere counter-attack to our capture of this small but important mound.

By this time, however, the Canadians had been withdrawn, and we left the salient with few regrets. But somewhere on the German side of our trench line there are thousands of graves of our fellow-countrymen, and when the time comes for the balancing of accounts we shall expect these to weigh heavy in the scales.

Our brigade was the first to be relieved, marching out on the night of May 3rd, wondering vaguely where we were going, and also, perhaps, what would become of our friends "Ox-eye" and "Freckleface," with their stolid faces, their ample bosoms, and their square hips.

CHAPTER XII

BAILLEUL

Our next stop was Bailleul, a town of some fifteen thousand inhabitants just over the Franco-Belgian frontier. Possibly it was never known before the war, but it is now, for sooner or later everyone goes to Bailleul: it was, until the taking over of the line below Arras, the Mecca of the British Army.

But it was fifteen weary miles from Brielen, fifteen miles that we stumbled over in a drizzling rain on slippery cobblestones before turning up through an archway off the main street to our billets. Good billets they were, too--a loft with ample straw for one platoon, a school-house for the other three, and houses on another street for the officers.

In spite of the early hour, about 3 o'clock, Madame was up and around and soon made us fresh coffee and the inevitable omelette; then we clattered up the steep little stairs to bed. F----, the sergeant who had been promoted, joined us here and proved a jolly good sort. We went out to hunt up new billets the next day. He, being a Quebecker, acted as interpreter, as our room was too small and stuffy for two, and, moreover, looked into the operating-room of a hospital opposite.

We were fortunate in finding another billet quite close--an important point, as we were to mess together--and then took a stroll around the town.

Bailleul is, like most French provincial towns, arranged like a star, the Grande Place and Hotel de Ville forming the centre. We found our way to the cathedral, where a white-haired old _cure_ showed us around, pointing out the door leading to the great square tower and the axe marks left by the German soldiers who burst it open. They had used the tower as an observing post during the week their cavalry had held the town the preceding October. The old man had been held as hostage by them, together with the mayor and some other notables, but when asked if he had been badly treated he was very non-committal. "Qu'est-ce que vous voulez?" he answered. "C'est, la guerre!" That is the doctrine of humility taught France in 1870. "C'est la guerre!" It is used to explain anything from the shooting of civilians to the high cost of hand-made lace!

In a jeweller's on the Grande Place we obtained a little fuller information as to the Germans' actions. They had robbed Madame of all her rings, deliberately broken up all her watch gla.s.ses--there was not one to be obtained in the town--and smashed with their sword hilts the gla.s.s of her show-cases. And across the square they had confiscated all the champagne in a _cafe_, and when no more was forthcoming they piled the tables on the _pave_ and burnt them; also she had heard----; but here F----'s patience had worn out, and as he said "Hearsay evidence is not admitted," so we said "Bonjour" and returned to billets.

Fortunately we did so, as we found we were slated to take a bathing parade at 1 o'clock and would barely have time to lunch. However, we caught the parade in time and marched the men to an old factory labelled "Divisional Baths." Here each man was supplied with a hot tub, soap and a clean towel, and was issued on stepping out from his tub with freshly-washed underwear, turning his soiled clothes in. This was a splendid system, and when later the clothes were not only washed but sterilised it ensured the men freedom for a short time at least from vermin.

It took some time running the whole company through in batches of forty, so we had a brief look around that part of the town. We also found that at the asylum officers could get a real bath--full length that one could stretch out in--at any time, but as it was late when our last man was ready to march off, we simply returned to billets.

We found the streets full of ambulances, most of them being gas cases from around Hill 60, and, in spite of the respirators, most of them pretty bad cases.

Being somewhat of a chemist, I managed to see some of these cases a few days later. The hospital was so crowded that many cases were lying on stretchers in the garden that lies at the back of all these hideous perpendicular French houses, s.h.i.+elded from the weather by an awning only. But the worst cases were upstairs in a long hall--some eighteen of them, none of which had any hope. Reeking with chlorine, their faces a livid purple or an even ghastlier green, they lay there on the stretchers, each with a little bowl beside him, coughing his life away.

And gradually the body would become weaker, the poor tortured lungs fail to clear themselves of the secretion that poured from their outraged tissue, and the fluid would acc.u.mulate slowly--oh, so slowly!--and the agonised victim died, not with the merciful swiftness of a bullet, but by gradual drowning.

This was the death that the Germans--ashamed of their own brutality--afterwards described as painless and merciful!

They may find justification for their crimes in Belgium, they may even smooth over the sinking of the _Lusitania_, but it must always be remembered that they, and they alone, are responsible for introducing into warfare this most ghastly and hideous death. It is said that German scientists spent years in perfecting this horror, practising its powers on plant life in the desert parts of Australia.

And the neutral nations--what of them? Are they not after all "accessories after the fact" and equally guilty? For, having sworn in solemn convention at the Hague to abstain from the use of asphyxiating gases, they entered no definite protest, though public opinion ran high on the subject.

Silence gives consent, and the poisoning of your enemy by chemical gases has now become the proper and chivalrous thing to do, and warfare has an added horror.

But the Allied chemists were at work devising means of lessening and preventing this danger, and already success was crowning their efforts; a new pattern respirator was devised and being issued, and a solution for dipping it in was already available. Dr. G----, of Queen's University, then serving as a subaltern in No. 2 Company, had been experimenting in private and devised a solution which varied only in the proportion of one of its elements from that adopted by the British Army, so we were probably the first brigade in the B.E.F. to receive this protection. Bottles of this fluid were carried by that long-suffering man the platoon sergeant, and parades held showing the men how to adjust and use the respirators.

Later we received flannel hoods, with mica windows, that had been dipped in the same solution, and these gave place in turn to the present gas helmet--a fearsome-looking affair, which, however, gives almost complete protection.

Our stay in Bailleul was enlivened by the arrival of a draft and the posting up of a schedule of training. The draft, needless to say, was the more welcome of the two. With the draft--who were magnificently-built men from the Middle West--we received a major who took command of the company, Captain H---- dropping back as second in command. We thought this was rather hard lines, but H---- made no complaint, though he felt it rather keenly, but finding our new man had the South African ribbon, we were a bit mollified.

Here, too, we held a memorial service for our fallen comrades, a powerful address being delivered by Major the Rev. William Beatty, one of the brigade chaplains. The troops, both old and new, were addressed, too, by Major-General Alderson, the divisional commander, who spoke of what the old men had done that the new men might understand what was expected of them, and stated that from now on he would count on us all as old troops.

Then we marched away feeling we were now a definite part of the old regiment, and a few days later started our trek southward.

We had entered another epoch!

CHAPTER XIII

THE TREK SOUTH

Until we left Bailleul the Canadian Division had been a part of the 2nd Army under Sir Herbert Plumer. We were now to go to the other end of the British line and become part of the 1st Army, then commanded by the present Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig.

The news of this change was greeted with little enthusiasm by the old soldiers in our midst, but old soldiers are invariably pessimists, and imagine that every inspection is the prelude to more "dirty work at the cross-roads" and that every change made in their dispositions is for the worst.

Still, we were all sorry to leave Bailleul, with its bright little shops, and to say good-bye to the _cure_ and our other friends there.

We fell in at night in the Grande Place--the little square that has probably seen more British troops come and go than any other town in northern France--and waited there for the battalion to form up. It was a beautiful summer night, the square tower of the cathedral and the Moorish spire of the Hotel de Ville forming perfect silhouettes against the starlit sky.

We were not kept waiting long; the shrill of a whistle from somewhere in the darkness put an end to all talking, and we hastily slung our packs on our shoulders again and started on our long tramp south to La Ba.s.see.

For a while our route lay through country that some of us had traversed before, and Merville, Vieux Berquin, and other places were hailed with delight. There is a certain charm in returning to places that one has never expected to see again. Much speculation began as to whether we were going back to our old trenches at Bois Grenier and Fleurbaix or not, but all hopes of this happening were dashed to pieces when, after pa.s.sing through Neuf Berquin, we turned sharply to the right.

After this disappointment our packs began to weigh more heavily; the mouth organs and vocalists were less persistent in their efforts and gradually stopped in disgust, and only an accordion, wielded by a husky Scotchman at the rear of the company, strove to cheer us up. It was probably "Lochaber no more" or some other dirge he was playing, as he always showed unnatural fondness for the weird and the sad--probably due to the difficulty of fingering lively airs while on the march.

Pa.s.sing through Merville, A----, who was marching beside me, regained his spirits sufficiently to point out a shop where a pretty girl sold champagne, and then relapsed into silence again.

A little further along the road we saw the adjutant riding alongside the major, and we knew we were nearing our billets. We turned up a side-road through Calonne, and the companies again broke off in different directions to the various farms to which they had been allotted.

We were again fortunate in getting very good accommodation--good airy barns, a mill-pond for was.h.i.+ng, and a well of no-worse-than-the-ordinary water. But imagine our surprise to find chalked on the gate of the largest and best farm a sign:--

"SMALL POX.

BY ORDER."