Private Peat Part 12

We could not tell what it was. Suddenly from out the mist we men in reserves saw movement. Coming toward us, running as though h.e.l.l as it really was had been let loose behind them, were the black troops from Northern Africa. Poor devils, I do not blame them. It was enough to make any man run. They were simple-minded fellows. They were there to fight for France, but their minds could not grasp the significance of the enemy against whom they were pitted. The gas rolled on and they fled. Their officers vainly tried to stem the flying tide of them. Their heels barely seemed to touch the ground. As they ran they covered their faces, noses and eyes with their hands, and through blackened lips, sometimes cracked and bleeding, they gasped, "Allemands! Allemands!"

Some of our own French-speaking officers stopped the few running men they could make hear, and begged of them to reform their lines and go back to the attack. But they were maddened as only a simple race can be frenzied by fear, and paid no heed.

It is in times like this, in moments of dire emergency, that the officer of true worth stands out, the real leader of men. There were a dozen incidents to prove this in the next few hurried, desperate moments. None can be more soul-stirring than the quick thought, quick action and foresight displayed by our own captain. He did not know what this smoke rus.h.i.+ng toward our lines could be. He had no idea more definite than any of us in the ranks.

But he had that quick brain that acts automatically in an emergency and thinks afterward.

"Wet your handkerchiefs in your water-bottles, boys!" he ordered.

We all obeyed promptly.

"Put the handkerchiefs over your faces--and shoot like the devil!" he panted.

We did this, and as the gas got closer, the handkerchiefs served as a sort of temporary respirator and saved many of us from a frightful death. We in the reserves suffered least. Yet some of us died by that infernal product.

A man dies by gas in horrible torment. He turns perfectly black, those men at any rate whom I saw at that time. Black as black leather, eyes, even lips, teeth, nails. He foams at the mouth as a dog in hydrophobia; he lingers five or six minutes and then--goes West.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Marvelous is the only word to describe the endurance, the valor of the Ladies from h.e.l.l. They withstood the gas, and they withstood wave after wave of attacking German hordes. And yet even their wonderful work was overtopped by that of the Eighth, which, being exposed on the left by the black troops who had fled, had to bear the brunt of a fight which almost surrounded them.

It was wonderful. I shall never forget it. There were twelve thousand Canadian troops. In the German official reports after the battle, they stated that they had used one hundred and twenty thousand men against us, and one thousand guns. We had not one gun. Those that we had were captured when the African blacks had left. It was our strength against theirs--no, it was white man's spirit against barbarian brutality.

For six days and nights that terrible death struggle continued. Every man was engaged: cooks, doctors, stretcher-bearers, chaplains, every one of us held a rifle. The wounded who had to take their chance of living because there was no way to convey them back to shelter--some of them would sit up, if they possibly could, to load and load again rifles which they lifted from dead comrades. They would hand us these as our rifles got too hot to hold. And still the German attacks persisted. Still they came on. And still we did not budge an inch from our position as it was when the gas first came over. They did not gain a yard, though when the British reserves at last reached us, there were only two thousand of us left standing on our feet; two thousand of us who were whole from out the twelve thousand that had started in to repel the attack.

The two thousand of us were still in the old position. Still we held in our safe-keeping the key of the road to Calais, to Paris, to London and farther. The key to world power which the Hohenzollern coveted.

Behind Ypres to-day there lie four thousand five hundred of the flower of the Canadian contingent. Four thousand five hundred young men who made the extreme sacrifice for King, for Flag, for Country, for Right. They lie in their narrow beds of earth, and over them wave the shading leaves of maple trees. For thoughtful citizens sent over and had planted "Canada's little maple grove"--a monument in a strange country to the men who fought and died and were not defeated.

On the night of April twenty-second, General Alderson and his officers saw that the situation was desperate. They thought to save their men. The general sent up the command: "Retire!"

The word first reached the Little Black Devils. The men heard it, the officers heard it, and they looked over the flattened parapet of their trench. They saw the oncoming hordes of brutes in a h.e.l.lish-looking garb, and they sent back the answer: "Retire be d.a.m.ned!"

The general, the officers, rested content. With a spirit such as these men showed even against desperate odds, nothing but victory could result.

The gas and the attacking waves of men poured on. We were not frightened.

No; none of us showed fear. Warfare such as this does not scare men with red blood in their veins. The Germans judge others by themselves. A German can be scared, a German can be bluffed. They thought that we were of the same mettle, or lesser. At the Somme we put over on the enemy the only new thing that we have been able to spring during the whole three years--the tanks. Were they scared? They were terrified! They dropped rifles, bayonets, knapsacks, everything--and ran. Had not our tanks stuck in the awful mud of France, or had they a trifle more speed, I believe it might have been possible for us to have reached Berlin by this time.

It was because we could not be frightened that General French, then Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, cabled across the world on the morning of the twenty-third of April, "The Canadians undoubtedly saved the situation."

No word of definite praise, no eulogy, no encomiums. Just six words--"The Canadians undoubtedly saved the situation."

The night of April twenty-second was probably the most momentous time of the six days and nights of fighting. Then the Germans concentrated on the Yser Ca.n.a.l, over which there was but one bridge, a murderous barrage fire which would have effectively hindered the bringing up of reinforcements or guns, even had we had any in reserve.

During the early stages of the battle, the enemy had succeeded to considerable degree in turning the Canadian left wing. There was a large open gap at this point, where the French Colonial troops had stood until the gas came over. Toward this sector the Germans rushed rank after rank of infantry, backed by guns and heavy artillery. To the far distant left were our British comrades. They were completely blocked by the German advance.

They were like rats in a trap and could not move.

At the start of the battle, the Canadian lines ran from the village of Langemarcke over to St. Julien, a distance of approximately three to four miles. From St. Julien to the sector where the Imperial British had joined the Turcos was a distance of probably two miles.

These two miles had to be covered and covered quickly. We had to save the British extreme right wing, and we had to close the gap. There was no question about it. It was our job. On the night of April twenty-second we commenced to put this into effect. We were still holding our original position with the handful of men who were in reserves, all of whom had been included in the original grand total of twelve thousand. We had to spread out across the gap of two miles and link up the British right wing.

Doing this was no easy task. Our company was out first and we were told to get into field skirmis.h.i.+ng order. We lined up in the pitchy darkness at five paces apart, but no sooner had we reached this than a whispered order pa.s.sed from man to man: "Another pace, lads, just another pace."

This order came again and yet again. Before we were through and ready for the command to advance, we were at least twice five paces each man from his nearest comrade.

Then it was that our captain told us bluntly that we were obviously outnumbered by the Germans, ten to one. Then he told us that practically speaking, we had scarcely the ghost of a chance, but that a bluff might succeed. He told us to "swing the lid over them." This we did by yelling, hooting, shouting, clamoring, until it seemed, and the enemy believed, that we were ten to their one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LINES AS THEY APPEARED, APRIL 24 BADLY BENT BUT NOT BROKEN]

The ruse succeeded. At daybreak when we rested we found that we had driven the enemy back almost to his original position. All night long we had been fighting with our backs to our comrades who were in the front trenches. The enemy had got behind us and we had had to face about in what served for trenches. By dawn we had him back again in his original position, and we were facing in the old direction. By dawn we had almost, though not quite, forced a junction with the British right.

The night of April twenty-second is one that I can never forget. It was frightful, yes. Yet there was a grandeur in the appalling intensity of living, in the appalling intensity of death as it surrounded us.

The German sh.e.l.ls rose and burst behind us. They made the Yser Ca.n.a.l a stream of molten glory. Sh.e.l.ls fell in the city, and split the darkness of the heavens in the early night hours. Later the moon rose in a splendor of spring-time. Straight behind the tower of the great cathedral it rose and shone down on a b.l.o.o.d.y earth.

Suddenly the grand old Cloth Hall burst into flames. The spikes of fire rose and fell and rose again. Showers of sparks went upward. A pall of smoke would form and cloud the moon, waver, break and pa.s.s. There was the mutter and rumble and roar of great guns. There was the groan of wounded and the gasp of dying.

It was glorious. It was terrible. It was inspiring. Through an inferno of destruction and death, of murder and horror, we lived because we must.

Early in the night the Fighting Tenth and the Sixteenth charged the wood of St. Julien. Through the undergrowth they hacked and hewed and fought and bled and died. But, outnumbered as they were, they got the position and captured the battery of 4.7 guns that had been lost earlier in the day.

This night the Germans caught and crucified three of our Canadian sergeants. I did not see them crucify the men, although I saw one of the dead bodies after. I saw the marks of bayonets through the palms of the hands and the feet, where by bayonet points this man had been spitted to a barn door. I was told that one of the sergeants was still alive when taken down, and before he died he gasped out to his saviors that when the Germans were raising him to be crucified, they muttered savagely in perfect English, "If we did not frighten you before, this time we will."

I know a sergeant of Edmonton, Alberta, who has in his possession to-day the actual photographs of the crucified men taken before the dead bodies were removed from the barnside.

Again I maintain that war frightfulness of this kind does not frighten real men. The news of the crucified men soon reached all of the ranks. It increased our hatred. It doubled our bitterness. It made us all the more eager to advance--to fight--to "get." We had to avenge our comrades.

Vengeance is not yet complete.

In the winter of 1914-1915 the Germans knew war. They had studied the game and not a move was unfamiliar to them. We were worse than novices. Even our generals could not in their knowledge compare with the expertness of those who carried out the enemy action according to a schedule probably laid down years before.

We knew that on the day following the terrible night of April twenty-second we must continue the advance, that we dare not rest, that we must complete the junction with the right wing of the British troops. And the enemy knew it, too.

We expected that the Germans would be entrenched possibly one hundred or even two hundred yards from our own position, but not so. His nearest entrenchment was easily a mile to a mile and a half across the open land from us.

The reason for this distance was simple enough. We had succeeded in our bluff that we had many hundreds more of men than in reality was the case.

The enemy calculated that had we this considerable number of troops we would capture his trenches, were he to take a position close in, with one short and mad rush. He further calculated that had we even a million men, he would have the best of us if we attempted to cross the long, open flat land in the face of his thousands of machine guns.

April twenty-third was one of the blackest days in the annals of Canadian history in this war, and again it was one of the most glorious. That day we were given the task of retaking the greater part of the trenches which the Turco troops had lost the day preceding.

We lay, my own battalion, easily a mile and a half from the German trench which was to be our objective. About six o'clock in the morning we set out very cautiously, with Major Kirkpatrick in command. C and D Companies were leading, with a platoon or two of B Company following, comprising in all about seven hundred and fifty men. At first we thought the advance would be comparatively easy, but when we entered the village of St. Julien, the German coal boxes were falling all around us. So far our casualties were light.

To the left of the village we formed in field skirmis.h.i.+ng order--about five paces apart--but before the formation of five successive lines or waves was completed, each man was easily eight paces away from his nearest mate instead of five. We were told that our objective was an enemy trench system about four hundred yards in length.

It is impossible to convey in words the feeling of a man in such a situation as this. Apparently none of us actually realized the significance of what we were about to undertake. Probably it was because we were no longer in the trenches, and because we had been out and in the open all the night before.

We stood there waiting. Overhead there was the continuous "Crack, crack, crack!" of enemy machine gun and other bullets. It was evident that we had already traversed a mile of our way, and that only half a mile lay ahead of us. The enemy bullets were flying high. I heard no command; I do not think any command was given in words, but of a sudden we heard a "Click!" to the left. No one even glanced in the direction. Every man fixed his bayonet.

The man on the extreme left had fixed his, the "Click" had warned his comrades eight paces away, and the ominous sound, ominous for Hans and Fritz, "Click, click, click!" ran along the lines.