ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
COLONEL GEORGE G. NASMITH, C.M.G.
ON THE FRINGE OF
THE GREAT FIGHT
By
COLONEL GEORGE G. NASMITH, C.M.G.
McC LELLAND, GOODCHILD & STEWART
PUBLISHERS :: :: :: TORONTO
N3
COPYRIGHT, CANADA, 1917
MCCLELLAND, GOODCHILD & STEWART, LIMITED
••; ••• TORONTO . !
PRINTED IN CANADA
TO
MY WAR BRIDE
M15379
IN FLANDERS FIELDS
In Flanders fields the poppies grow,
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead, short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunsets glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe.
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch : be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies blow
In Flanders fields.
JOHN MACCRAE,
(Lt-Col.)
By permission of the author.
vn
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE Xl
CHAPTER I.
ON THE ROAD TO A GREAT ADVENTURE 1
CHAPTER II.
ON SALISBURY PLAINS 11
CHAPTER III.
EARLY WAR DAYS IN LONDON 32
CHAPTER IV.
DAYS WHEN THINGS WENT WRONG 46
CHAPTER V.
THE LOST CANADIAN LABORATORY 62
CHAPTER VI.
THE DAYS BEFORE YPRES 70
CHAPTER VII.
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 83
ix
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER VIII.
THE AFTERMATH OF THE GAS 107
CHAPTER IX.
THE MEDICAL ORGANIZATION OF THE BRITISH ARMY . . 125
CHAPTER X.
KEEPING THE BRITISH SOLDIER FIT 134
I
CHAPTER XI.
LABORATORY WORK IN THE FIELD 152
CHAPTER XII.
SKETCHES FROM A LABORATORY WINDOW .... 169
s
CHAPTER XIII.
PARIS IN WAR TIME 189
CHAPTER XIV.
TABLE TALK AT A FLANDERS MESS 211
CHAPTER XV.
ON THE BELGIAN BORDER 230
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Colonel George G. Nasmith, C.M.G. . . Frontispiece
Mechanical Transports in Salisbury Floods . . 16
Major-General M. S. Mercer, C.B 64
German Barrage Fire at Night 104
French Soldiers Advancing under Cover of
Liquid Fire .176
The Camouflage 208
uHome, Sweet Home"— Mud Terrace ... 232
British Tanks as Used in the Flanders Offensive 248
XI
PREFACE
On April 22nd, 1915, the writer, in company with
Major Rankin, saw the Germans launch their first gas
attack near St. Julien upon the section of the line held
by the French colonial troops and the first Canadian
division.
This book was written primarily for the purpose
of recording this as well as some of the other exper-
iences of the first Canadian division as seen from the
unusual angle of a scientist, in the course of 18,000 miles
of travel in the front line area. It had the secondary
object of giving the average reader some insight into
what goes on behind the lines, and the means employed
to maintain the health and efficiency of the British and
Canadian soldiers in the field.
No attempt has been made to deal with the work
of the real fighting men on land and in the air; others
far better qualified than I are doing that.
If the book has no other merit, it has, at least, that
of being literally true.
Xlll
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
CHAPTER I. /.%:,.:> V--
ON THE ROAD TO A GREAT ADVENTURE.
IT began with a wish. That takes me back to a
pleasant day in early August, 1914, and a verandah
at Ravenscrag, Muskoka — a broad, cool, verandah over-
looking dancing dark waters. A light breeze stirred
the leaves and gently wafted to us the smell of the pines
and the woods, mingled with the sweet odours of the
scented geranium, verbena, and nicotine in the rock-girt
garden. But my mind was far removed from the peace-
fulness of my immediate surroundings : the newspaper
I held in my hand was filled with kaleidoscopic de-
scriptions of the great European tumult. Unconscious-
ly I voiced aloud the thought that was uppermost in my
mind: "I would gladly give ten years of my life if I
could serve my country in this war." "Do not say that,"
warned my hostess, looking up from her magazine, "for
everything comes to you on a wish," and nothing more
was said of the matter at the time.
That day was a very quiet one with our little house-
party. We made our usual launch trip through the
lakes but nobody talked much. Each was busy with
his own thoughts, wondering what England could do
in the great emergency. Could she, or could she not,
save France from the invading hosts of Germany?
And deeper in each mind was the unspoken fear, "Per-
haps it is already too late to save France — perhaps, even
now, the question is 'Can England save herself ?' '
1
2
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
The great depression in men's minds during those early
days of the war when the bottom seemed to have
dropped out of life and men strove to grasp at some-
thing upon which to reconstruct a new system of
thought and life and work, had enveloped us like a chill
evening mist.
Those were ghastly days. While France, Russia
and England were feverishly mobilizing, the brave
little force of Belgians was being steadily rolled up
by the perfectly equipped German war machine and the
road to France hourly becoming easier. England had
commissioned K. of K. to gather together a civilian
army of three million men, and Canada had called for
one division to be mobilized at Valcartier Camp, a
place somewhere in the Laurentian Hills near the city
of Quebec. Little did any of us dream how prophetic
was to be that apparently chance remark of our hostess.
But the first greeting from the maid when we reached
home that evening was, "There is a long distance call
for you, sir." The Minister of Militia had asked me
to report in Ottawa immediately. Next morning I
waved my friends, "Au revoir." That return was far
from being as speedy as we expected, for my wish
very shortly came true.
The greeting of the Minister of Militia, Sir Sam
Hughes, as he turned from the desk where he sat in
shirt-sleeves, with typewriters on all sides of him, was
a cordial handshake and a slap on the back. Would I
go down to the new camp at Valcartier and look after
the purification of the water supply? I was delighted
to get the chance.
2
ON THE ROAD TO A GREAT ADVENTURE
A short wait at the office gave me a splendid oppor-
tunity of seeing a military headquarters office in opera-
tion. Officers of all ranks, from Generals to Majors,
hurried in one after another to obtain permission to do
this or that; prominent men anxious to do anything
they might to assist in the great crisis, crowded the
office. Telephone conversations, telegrams, cables, in-
terviews, dictation of letters, reading of letters aloud —
to watch or listen to the incessant commingling of all
these, with the Minister of Militia as the centre of
energy, was a unique experience for me. Sir Sam
cracked jokes, dictated letters, swore at the telephone
operator, and carried on conversation with a number
of persons — all at the same time. It was a marvellous
demonstration of what a man could do in an emergency,
if he happened to be the right man — the man who not
only knew what needed to be done but had sufficient
force of character and driving power to convert his
decisions into practical achievements.
The following night on our return from an in-
spection of the new camp at Valcartier I stood near the
citadel in Quebec watching the moving lights on the St.
Lawrence far below. As I looked the flashes of a
powerful searchlight swept the river, lighting up the
opposite shores and playing upon the craft in the river.
This was the first concrete evidence I had that our
country was at war; it was also a reminder that there
was even a possibility that Quebec might be attacked
from the sea.
Of the growth of that wonderful camp, of our
experiences there, of the training and equipping of
3
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
33,000 men, of the struggles for position, and of the
numerous disappointments and bitternesses because all
could not go, I will not here attempt to speak. There
was a great deal to do and to learn and the time passed
quickly. It had been decided that I was to accompany
the contingent as adviser in sanitation and in charge of
the water supply, and, despite all delays and disappoint-
ments, the day did finally come when we drove in to
Quebec to board our steamer for England.
At midnight, the Franconia slipped slowly and
silently away from the dock. Only three were there to
bid us farewell — a man and two women, — and though
they sang with great enthusiasm, "It's a Long, Long
Way to Tipperary," the effect was melancholy. Imper-
ceptibly the pier and the lights of the city receded and
we steamed on down the mighty St. Lawrence to our
trysting place on the sea. The second morning after-
wards we woke to find ourselves riding quietly at anchor
in the sunny harbour of Gaspe, with all the other trans-
ports anchored about us, together with four long grey
gunboats, — our escort upon the road to our great ad-
venture.
The brilliant afternoon sun of a typical Canadian
Autumn day shone down upon Gaspe basin. Idly we
lounged about the decks, gazing at the shores with
their little white fishermen's cottages, or at the thirty
odd troopships, and the four grey gunboats which
studded the harbour. The surface of the water was
rippled by a light breeze and all was quiet and peaceful
in the shelter of that sunny haven. Even the gulls,
gorged with the waste food from the ships, swam lazily
about or flapped idly hither and thither.
4
ON THE ROAD TO A GREAT ADVENTURE
My gaze had fixed itself upon the nearest of the
lean, grey gunboats. As I watched, the sleeping grey-
hound seemed to move; in another moment the seem-
ing illusion gave way to certainty — it 'was moving;
gradually its pace accelerated and it slipped quietly out
toward the open sea. A second gunboat followed,
then a third, all making for the open. Immediately
we were all excitement, for the rumour had been cur-
rent that we might be there for several days. But the
rumour was speedily disproved as the rattle of anchor
chains became audible from the transports nearest the
harbour mouth, and one by one they followed their
little grey guides; and so, at three of the clock on
October the third, 1914, the First Canadian Contingent
with guns, ammunition, horses and equipment, left
Gaspe en route to the great war.
Gradually method evolved itself out of apparent
chaos. Three gunboats took the lead and the transports
fell into line about a thousand yards from one another,
so that eventually three lines were formed of about a
dozen in each and the whole fleet moved forward into
the Atlantic. The shores of Gaspe, dotted with white
cottages; yellow stubble fields; hills red and purple
with autumnal foliage— these were our last pictures of
Canada — truly the last that many of us were ever to see,
and we looked upon them, our hearts filled with emo-
tions that these scenes had never given rise to before.
Our ruddy Canadian emblem, the maple leaf, gave its
characteristic tinge to the receding shores — a colour to
be seen often on the field of battle, but never in the
foliage of a European landscape.
5
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
We were making history; the great epoch-making
enterprise of our young country was taking place — an
undertaking that would go down in the annals of the
Empire of Great Britain as a great incident of the
period when the young cubs raced to the assistance of
the old lion in her hour of need — this we realized. And
yet it was hard to realize that we were actually fortu-
nate enough to be taking part in an expedition, the like
of which never was before, and probably never will be
again. Never before had there been gathered together
a fleet of transports of such magnitude — a fleet consist-
ing of 33 transports carrying 33,000 men, 7,000 horses
and all the motors, waggons and equipment necessary
to place in the field not only a complete infantry divi-
sion, and a cavalry brigade, but in addition to provide
for the necessary reserves.
At night we steamed along like phantom ships.
All windows and port holes were carefully screened
so that one might walk the deck and see not a single ray
of light to reveal the whereabouts of the accompanying
vessels.
Off Newfoundland as our three lines of ships were
ploughing along, about a mile and a half apart, we
picked up H.M.S. "Glory" which took a position about
ten miles away on our right. Our ship, the "Franconia,"
the flagship of the fleet, had the headquarter staff, the
90th Regiment of Winnipeg, and a number of nurses
on board, and she held place in the centre of the middle
line.
How an orderly fleet could be immediately dis-
ON THE ROAD TO A GREAT ADVENTURE
organized was well demonstrated one morning when
our whistle blew sharply several times "Man Over-
board." As we slowed down, with throbbing engines
reversed churning the ocean into foam, we could see
the tiny speck (a man's head) floating by. While our
lifeboat was being lowered and the man was being
rescued, the three lines of transports buckled and the
ships see-sawed to right and left in their efforts to avoid
collisions.
The man proved to be a painter who, unobserved,
had fallen off the "Royal Edward" in front of us, and
but for the vigilance of the lookout on our ship, would
undoubtedly have perished.
There seemed to be about a thousand nurses aboard
the Franconia — the real number was about a hundred
but they multiplied by their ubiquity; they swarmed
everywhere ; sometimes they filled the lounge so that the
poor Major or Colonel could not get in for his after-
noon cup of tea. The daily lectures for officers, par-
ticularly on subjects like "artillery range finding" had
an abnormal fascination for the nurses while subjects
like "the Geneva Convention" and "Hygiene" which
they might have found useful held little attraction for
them. Such is the perversity of the nurse when given
the rank of an officer and freed from all hospital re-
straint. At the concerts few officers could obtain seats
and a few of us were mean enough to wish that it would
get rough enough to put some of the nurses temporarily
down and out. The nurses were in a doubly fortunate
position in that they could demand the rights of both
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
officers and women, according to which happened to
be advantageous at the moment.
The 90th Regiment athe little black devils" of
Winnipeg was a very fine body of men indeed; they
were drilled by the hour on the decks, and were given
lectures. They entertained themselves in their spare
time by getting up boxing bouts and concerts. The
antics of a bear cub and a monkey, the battalion mas-
cots, amused the men for many hours at a time.
One night the officers gave a dinner party. The
first plan was to invite no nurses at all. Then other
counsels prevailed and invitations were to be given to
a limited number. As this would have caused all sorts
of petty jealousies and heart burnings, a compromise
was effected by — asking them all.
The dinner was a great success. An eight-piece
band, for which the instruments had been purchased the
day before we left Quebec, had been practising assidu-
ously on the upper deck for days with effects of a most
weird character, and there made its first public appear-
ance. With the aid of a pipe band it helped to drown
the popping of corks and the various other noises due to
the consumption of many bottles of champagne and
hock. The dinner was followed by a dance and the
nurses were allowed to stay up till midnight instead of
being chased to bed at the usual hour of ten o'clock.
One of the unique and most interesting occasions
of the trip was when the famous battle cruiser, the
"Queen Mary" came up about dusk one evening and
ran through our lines amid great excitement. This
was the battle cruiser that had not long before convert-
8
ON THE ROAD TO A GREAT ADVENTURE
ed the German cruiser "Emden" into a mass of twisted
iron in a few minutes. As she steamed slowly by she
presented one of the finest spectacles I have ever seen.
Somehow nothing in the world looks as efficient for its
particular job as a battle cruiser; it is the personifica-
tion of power and beauty.
One morning at six o'clock a light was discovered
in the distance. Someone said it was the light-house
off Land's End. So it proved. By eight o'clock we
could make out clearly the coast of Cornwall. As the
land grew nearer the famous Eddystone Lighthouse
came into view, and, making a great sweep around it,
instead of running for Southampton as we all had ex-
pected, we headed for Plymouth. A number of tor-
pedo boats, commonly called "Ocean Lice," accom-
panied us for the last few miles, as a protection against
submarines.
The approach to Plymouth was wonderfully sooth-
ing. The hills covered with beautiful foliage in shades
of brown and olive green were a most restful change
from the monotony of the sea. A marked contrast to
the peacefulness of the countryside were the fortifica-
tions everywhere visible commanding the approach to
perhaps the most strongly fortified port in Southern
England. With the possible exception of Sydney, Au-
tralia, Plymouth is said to be the most beautiful harbour
in the Empire. One could well believe it.
Tugs puffed out to meet us, pilots climbed aboard,
and we slowly steamed up the long sinuous channel,
past Edgecombe to Davenport. All the warships being
built or equipped, the forts, the training ships and the
9
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
docks, indeed every point of vantage was thronged with
cheering crowds of people, — civilians, soldiers and
sailors. Cheer after cheer from our Canadian soldiers
responded to those from our English friends as we
slowly made our way up the channel. It seemed as
though everybody had gone crazy.
It was a never-to-be-forgotten reception; we felt
that we were indeed a part of the Empire in spirit as
well as in name. About three o'clock we came to
anchor, and during the afternoon ship after ship fol-
lowed in and anchored alongside. At night we crowd-
ed up even closer to give the late-comers room. For the
first time on our trip the vessels were all brilliantly
illuminated, the bands played, the giddy ones danced,
and all were happy to be once again in sight of solid
land. At dinner the commandant, Col. Williams, made
a speech and called for three cheers for our Captain,
and never, I suppose, did any other Captain receive
such hearty cheers and such a tremendous "tiger." It
was the culmination of a marvellous and historic trip.
The trip to Salisbury by motor next day was a
dream — a dream of hedges and great trees meeting over-
head ; of hills and valleys with little thatched cottages
and villages nestling in them, of beautiful estates and
sheep, of quaint old English farms, of ancient towns
and villages. Through Ivy Bridge and Honiton to Exe-
ter, where we stopped to see the beautiful old Cathedral,
so warm and rich in colouring and passing by one long
series of beautiful pictures, in perhaps the most charm-
ing pastoral landscape in the world, we came to the
white-scarred edge of the famous Salisbury Plain.
10
CHAPTER II.
ON SALISBURY PLAINS.
IT was on the 15th of October that we landed in Ply-
mouth. A few days later the whole of the 33,000
(with the exception of a few errant knights who had
gone off on independent pilgrimages) were more or
less settled on Salisbury Plain. The force was divided
into four distinct camps miles apart. One infantry
brigade and the headquarters staff was stationed at
Bustard Camp ; one section was camped a couple of
miles away, at West Down South; a third at West
Down North still farther away, and the fourth at Pond
Farm about five miles from Bustard. Convenience of
water supplies and arrangements for the administration
of the forces made these divisions necessary.
The plains of Salisbury, ideal for summer military
camps, are rolling, prairie-like lands stretching for
miles, broken by a very occasional farm house or by
plantations of trees called "spinneys." A thin layer of
earth and turf covered the chalk which was hundreds
of feet in depth ; at any spot a blow with a pick would
bring up the white chalk filled with black flints. The
hills by which the plains were reached rose sharply
from the surface of Wiltshire, so that Salisbury Plain
itself could be easily distinguished miles away by the
white, water worn rifts in the hillsides.
When we first arrived the plains gave promise of
being a fine camping ground. Tents were pitched,
11
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
canteens opened, work was begun and our boys settled
down impatiently to receive the further training neces-
sary before passing over to that Mecca to which one
and all looked forward — the battle grounds of Flanders.
For a few days all went well ; then it began to rain.
About the middle of November it settled down in
earnest and rained steadily for a month; sometimes it
merely drizzled, at other times it poured; but it never
stopped, except for an hour or so. The constant tramp
of many feet speedily churned into mud the clay turf
overlaying the chalk, and the rain could not percolate
through this mixture as it did the unbroken sod. In a
few days the mud was one inch — four inches — and even
a foot deep. Many a time I waded through mud up to
my knees.
The smooth English roads, lacking depth of road-
metal, were speedily torn to pieces by the heavy traffic
of motors and steam traction engines. Passing cars
and lorries sprayed the hedges with a thin mud-emul-
sion formed from the road binder, and exposed the
sharp flints which, like so much broken glass, tore to
pieces the tires of the motors.
Cold high winds, saturated with moisture, accom-
panied the rain and searched one's very marrow.
Nothing would exclude these sea breezes but skin or
fur coats, and though accustomed to a severe climate,
we Canadians felt the cold in England as we never had
at home. Sometimes the temperature fell below the
freezing point, and occasionally we had sleet, hail or
snow for variety. Tents were often blown down by
the hundreds, and it was a never-to-be-forgotten sight
12
ON SALISBURY PLAINS
watching a small army of soldiers trying to hold and
pin down some of the large mess tents, while rope after
rope snapped under the straining of the flapping can-
vas. One day the post office tent collapsed, and some
of the mail disappeared into the heavens, never to
return.
The officers of the headquarter staff were fairly
comfortable in comparison to the others. Our tents
were pitched in a quadrangle formed by four rows of
trees and scrub, which had evidently been planted
around the site of a former house and served to break
the high winds. Each officer had a tent with a wooden
floor. Mine was carpeted with an extra blanket to ex-
clude draughts and make it feel comfortable under one's
bare feet in the morning. The tent was heated by an
oil stove which was kept burning night and day; and at
night I slept snug and warm in the interior of a Jaeger
sleeping blanket in a Wolseley kit. My batman, Kar-
ner, had made a table from some boxes and boards which
he had picked up, I know not where. It is unwise to ask
your batman too many foolish questions as to the origin
of things, — take what he gives you and be thankful.
This table covered with another blanket, served to
support a splendid brass lamp with a green silk shade,
for which I had paid a fabulous sum in Salisbury town.
It also held some books, brushes, and other necessaries.
A shelf underneath displayed a little brass kettle and
other paraphernalia for making tea, while my other
books were arranged in a neat row beneath.
The tents were wet all the time, and the clothes
and blankets of the men soon became water soaked and
13
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
remained so for weeks at a stretch for they had no stoves
or other facilities for drying them. But Tommy, the
resourceful, learned that he could get warm by the
simple process of wrapping himself up in wet blankets
and steaming as he would in a Turkish bath, — with him-
self as the heater. He also discovered that a pair of wet
socks, well wrung out and placed next his chest at night
would be half dry in the morning. He had to sleep in
a bell tent with seven others, radiating like spokes of
a wheel from the centre tent pole. He had nothing to
give him any comfort whatever.
It was impossible to do any work, even route
marching, and, having nothing to do but lie around and
think of himself, Tommy began to grouse. Each camp
had become a morass with mud a foot deep, and Tommy
looked out upon it and behold it was not good, and he
cursed both loud and long whoever he thought might
be responsible for the conditions, and particularly
Emperor Bill the cause of it all. The Canadian contin-
gent had begun a process of mildewing.
One felt sorry for the poor horses. Picketed in
the open plain or in the partial shelter of the occasional
"spinneys,"they stood with ears drooping and tails to
the wind, pictures of dejection. No doubt they, too,
cursed the Kaiser. Their feet became soft from stand-
ing idly in the mud, and in a good many cases had be-
come diseased; in general they went off badly in condi-
tion. Standing orders prohibited the cutting down of
a bush or tree on Salisbury Plain, but in the night time
we could sometimes hear the familiar sound of an axe
meeting standing timber, and one could guess that
14
ON SALISBURY PLAINS
Tommy, in his desire for wood to build a fire, and re-
gardless of rules, had grown desperate. As one of them
said to Rudyard Kipling when he was down visiting
them, "What were trees for if they were not to be cut
down?"
Towards the middle of December, one evening
there was a sharp tap on the tent of Capt. Haywood,
Medical Officer of the third (Toronto) Battalion.
"Come in" he cried.
The laces were undone and Sergeant Kipple
stepped into the tent. The Sergeant was a good man
—an old soldier and reliable as the proverbial watch.
"Well, what is it?" said the M. O.
"I want you to give me somethink to buck me up"
said the Sergeant in a tearful voice.
"But what is the matter?" said the M. O. "Have
you a cold?"
"No, I aint got no cold" he said, "I just wants
somethink to buck me up; some qui-nine or somethink."
"But what's the matter?" persisted the M. O.
"What do you want it for?"
"Nothing's wrong with me" said the sergeant, "I
jist want somethink to buck me up; this rine is getting
on me nerves. It rines all day, and me clothes 'aven't
been dry for a month — if I go out I get more wet. All
day long I 'ave to splash about in the blinkin' mud
and rine. At night I cawnt go to sleep. Me clothes
are wet; me blankets are soaked. I 'ears the bl — rine
coming down on the bl — tent which leaks all over; it
makes a 'ell of a noise on the tent and I cawnt sleep.
I gets up in the morning and 'ave to do me work and do
IS
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
me dooty. But Doc, it's gettin' me goat. I feel like
cutting me bl — throat. I 'ave 'ad thirteen years in the
awmy and 'ave me good conduc stripes. I 'ave a wife
and two kids at 'ome. I didn't come over 'ere to drown ;
I came over to fight. I wants to do me work but I
cawnt do it. If you don't give me somethink Doc I am
afraid I'll cut me bloody throat and I don't want to die.
Cawn't you give me somethink to buck me up, Doc
please?"
The Doc did give him something, and between that
and a little judicious "jollying" Kipple was a different
man in a few days.
Of course there was trouble. The contingent was
going through a rough experience, and to most of us
Salisbury Plain was becoming a nightmare. A fairly
large number of the men were given leave, and an
equally large number took French leave. The latter
migrated in large numbers to the little villages around
the outskirts of the plain where they settled down to
a few days' comfort before they were rounded up by
the military police.
Some went to London, and, worshipping at the
shrines of Venus and Bacchus, forgot about the war,
and tarried in the fascinating metropolis. Others
sought a few hours' respite and forgetfulness in the
town of Salisbury, where they hobnobbed with their
British confreres and treated them to various drinks.
At times the British Tommy, stung at the flaunting of
pound notes where he had only shillings, smote his
colonial brother, and bloody battles resulted in conse-
quence thereof.
16
ON SALISBURY PLAINS
It was a curious fact that it was the Englishman
who had gone out to Canada a few years before and now
returned as a Canadian, who was the chief offender in
this respect. He had gained a new airiness and sense
of freedom which he was proud of, and it brought him
into trouble. My own chauffeur, an Englishman, was
the invariable champion of all American cars as com-
pared with English cars, which he delighted in saying
were from three to four years behind the times. This
same man four years before had been working on auto-
mobiles in London, where he was born.
At one stage it looked as if the force was under-
going a process of decomposition, and would disinte-
grate. The morale of the men under the very depress-
ing conditions which existed, had almost gone and they
did not care what happened them. Privates, perhaps
college men or wealthy business men in Canada, frankly
said when arrested, that they were quite willing to pay
the price, but that they had determined to get warm
and dry once more before they were drowned in the
mud. It is an easy matter to handle a few cases of
this sort, but when you get hundreds of them little can
be done, and threats, fines and punishments were of
little avail in correcting the existing state of affairs.
As a matter of fact, under the conditions the mili-
tary authorities were hard put to it to control the situa-
tion. Each night the motor lorries returned loaded
with men under arrest, and each day an equally large
number left the camp to undergo the same experience.
All the time the wastage went on. One soldier
fell off a cart and fractured his skull; another had his
17
3
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
legs amputated by a lorry; a third was accidentally shot,
and another committed suicide. It is astonishing how
many accidents can occur among 30,000 men.
New huts were being built at Larkhill, near the
ancient Phoenician remains called Stonehenge, but the
progress made was so slow that finally our men were put
on the job, and the huts began to go up like mushrooms.
Hundreds of Canadians, belonging to Highland and
other regiments, built roads, huts, and other works, in
a country apparently filled with labouring men with
no intention of ever going to war, and who, in fact, often
did not believe that there was a war. We all felt some-
what relieved one night when we heard that the German
fleet was bombarding the English coast, hoping that it
would shake the country out of its feeling of smug self-
complacency and lethargy.
On November 20th, there were 150 men in our
hospital at Bulford Manor; three weeks later there were
780. It had rained every day in the interval, and there
was a great deal of influenza and bronchial troubles,
which made splendid foundation for attacks of other
diseases.
Towards the end of the year the men began to
move into the new huts at Larkhill. We had already
officially forecasted in black and white, that the huts,
being raised from the ground, would be colder to sleep
in, and whereas there had been only eight men in the
tent to be infected should one man become ill with a
communicable disease, there would now be forty in each
hut; and that in consequence we should expect a great
increase in illness from such diseases. And there was.
18
ON SALISBURY PLAINS
It began to increase as soon as the men got into the
huts. These huts were heated with stoves, and fuel was
provided. Consequently the men, before going to bed,
got the stoves red hot, closed and sealed the windows
with paper, contrary to standing orders, and went to bed
with the huts overheated. When the stoves went out
the huts cooled down and the usual story one heard was
of the men waking at three or four in the morning cold
and shivering. The heat also served to shrink the floor
boards so that the draughts came through and made
matters worse.
Then the scare came. Prior to this the report of
an odd case of cerebro-spinal meningitis had not occa-
sioned any concern. Under these menacing conditions
cases of the disease became more numerous and when
Col. Strange died of it uneasiness culminated in real
alarm.
My proposed trip to Scotland for Christmas was
postponed and instead I was sent up to London to get an
expert bacteriologist on the disease and arrange to start
a laboratory. The object was to see what could be done
in locating "carriers" of the disease germ, and thereby
keep the disease from spreading. Accordingly, on the
day before Christmas, I arranged with the Director of
the Lister Institute for the loan of Dr. Arkwright of
his staff and for the necessary apparatus to equip a
laboratory at Bulford Cottage Hospital. It was a for-
lorn hope, but it was the only thing that could be done
to try to get this elusive disease under control. I spent
Christmas day in camp, and it was a melancholy day
indeed. The men were all well looked after, and for
19
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
those in the hospitals the day was made as bright as
possible. It seemed years since we had left Canada.
When we brought down the bacteriological appar-
atus by passenger train a few days later we paid excess
baggage on 780 pounds but we got it through. It took
five men to shove the trucks containing the boxes, and
we held the connecting train for five minutes at Salis-
bury Junction until we made the transfer. This saved
time, for the London people would not guarantee de-
livery for five weeks.
The epidemic of cerebro-spinal meningitis proved
to be a blessing in disguise, for it educated both
combatant officers and men as to the necessity of observ-
ing certain simple precautions to prevent the spread of
any contagious disease; and it also showed them that
when disease once got out of hand it would be possible
to put whole battalions hors de combat. Col. Mercer
kept his brigade moving about on the sod in tents all
winter, and as a result, there was very much less sick-
ness in his brigade than in the other brigades housed
in huts.
Then nature came to our rescue, and took a hand
in the game. The rains grew less frequent; the sun
put in an occasional appearance; training was begun
once more, and a rapid improvement was immediately
apparent in the men. Again the sound of singing was
heard in the tents at night and on route marches; and
again one began to see smiling faces. With the im-
provement in weather conditions, training went briskly
on, and the division began to rapidly round into shape
Meanwhile the artillery and cavalry had gone into
20
ON SALISBURY PLAINS
billets in the surrounding villages, and were behaving
splendidly. The people took to them very kindly, and
the men themselves looked so clean and happy that it
was difficult to realize that they were the same unkempt,
dirty individuals who had been seen not so long before
wading through the mud and filth of the plains.
All sorts of rumours were current. A favorite
one was that we were to go to Egypt to finish our train-
ing there. Another one whispered among the staff
was that we would shortly leave for France. The men
worked hard at their training, anxious to make good
and get to the Front. They had the old Viking spirit
of adventure in their blood, and wanted to get to the
battle ground. We all knew that many of us would be
killed, but we all felt that it would be the other fellow
— not ourselves.
After the laboratory had been started, the force had
to a large extent been reassured thereby that everything
possible was being done that could be done. When,
with better weather, the sickness began to abate, I ob-
tained permission from our Surgeon-General to try to
get the rest of our men inoculated against typhoid
fever. We had arrived in England with 65 per cent,
of the men inoculated, and it was my ambition to get
them all done before the division left for France.
Accordingly I settled down in the Bear Hotel in
the little Wiltshire town of Devizes, the head-quarters
of the artillery brigade, and began my educational cam-
paign.
The old Bear Hotel was one of the famous old
coaching houses of former days; it had seen much life
21
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
in ye olden times when it had been the chief stopping
place of the bloods of London en route to the famous
City of Bath and the historic Pump Room. It was a
homey-looking old place, with the usual appearance of
comfort pertaining to an English Inn, and the maximum
amount of discomfort as judged by our modern stan-
dards. The food was good, and the fire places looked
bright and cheery, like the bar maid behind the polished
bar. It was mostly in looks. No wonder that the Bri-
tish people fortify themselves with copious draughts
of stimulants to help keep out the cold. There were
some magnificent pieces of old furniture and Sheffield
plate in the halls — pieces that many a collector had
tried in vain to purchase. My room lit by two candles
in earthenware candlesticks ; and with a fire in a corner
grate — at a shilling a day extra — looked cozy enough
but the bedroom furniture was ancient and uncomfor-
table.
The officers of the Artillery Headquarters lived at
the hotel, and I took my meals with them. Col. Bur-
stall, the officer commanding, gave me every assistance
and issued orders to his officers to aid in every possible
way in the campaign.
My object was to educate all the artillery and
cavalry units on the danger of using impure water, on
typhus fever and how it was conveyed by lice, and on
the value and necessity of anti-typhoid inoculation.
The following day I gave my first talk in a large
shed in the town, to about 700 artillery men of the first
artillery brigade. It was a unique experience, standing
on a great stack of boxes of loaded ammunition beside
22
ON SALISBURY PLAINS
Colonel Morrison and the medical officer Lt.-Col.
McCrae, talking to the brigade drawn up at attention
around us. It was an attentive audience; the men had
to listen, though as a matter of fact, they really seemed
interested. When paraded next day 370 uninoculated
were discovered and given the treatment; the few who
refused were sent to the base depot and replaced by
others.
The campaign begun so successfully was carried
on from day to day. Arrangements were made by tele-
phone or wire with the O. C.'s of the various units, to
have their men paraded for my lectures. The weather
was frequently wet, and the talks were given in farm
yards, village squares, churches, schools, hay-lofts, and
open fields. In some instances the units, broken up into
small sections, were scattered about the country so that I
would have to talk to SO men at once instead of several
hundred.
One of the most unique occasions was the Sunday
when I addressed the 3rd Artillery brigade, after
church parade in the market square of Market Laving-
don. We arrived early and sat and listened while, from
the little stone church high up on the hill above us,
drifted the sound of soldiers singing. It was unutter-
ably sad to me to hear the full mellow soldier chorus
swelling out on "Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching
as to War." One felt that the words must have had to
all of them a meaning that they never had had before.
Then the brigade formed up and was played by the
village band to the market place where they were drawn
up into a square with some gun carriages in the centre.
23
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
When all was ready I mounted a gun carriage and gave
my talk with all the earnestness I could muster, while
the villagers congregated at one side, stood and gaped,
and wondered what it was all about.
My talk had settled down into a 20-minute dis-
course, and I gave variations of it as often as four times
in an afternoon at places 10 miles apart. In this way
one saw a good deal of the Wiltshire scenery in the late
winter season. It was a never-failing source of wonder
and pleasure to me to see the ivy covered banks, the
ivy clad trees and the rhododendrons and holly trees
in green leaf in the middle of the winter. In the
garden at the back of the famous old Elizabethan house
in Potterne — a perfect example of the old Tudor tim-
bered style of architecture — cowslips and pansies were
in full blossom, and I was told the wild violets were in
flower in the woods. The trim, well kept gardens,
hedges and fields of the country side and village were
a continual delight to a native of Canada where every-
thing in comparison looks so unfinished and in need of
trimming. The winter wheat was as green as the new
grass of spring time, and many of the meadows also
were fairly green. Some shrubs, and in particular an
unknown yellow-flowered, leafless vine, were in blos-
som. I heard afterwards that it was the Jasmine.
During those January days when the sun shone fit-
fully, some wonderful atmospheric effects were to be
seen at times on the plains. For the painter who wanted
atmosphere and light and vivid contrasts, that was the
place to be, for never did I see elsewhere such wonder-
24
ON SALISBURY PLAINS
ful pastel effects; never such vivid-colored banks of
spray and fog.
The little straw-thatched farm houses with their
small paned windows frequently filled with flowers in
bloom, nestling in gardens and shrubberies and orchards,
had a more or less comfortable and homey look during
the day time ; but at dusk when the light was failing and
the lamp light shone through the windows, these farm
houses took on a wonderfully attractive and romantic
appearance. It made you feel like going to the door
and asking for a glass of new milk or a cup of cider ; and
you had visions of blazing fires in the great fireplace,
and brass utensils, hanging from the walls ; comfy ingle
nooks, old beam ceilings and ancient oak furniture;
hams suspended from the kitchen ceilings, and old blue
willow pattern plates on the walls. That nothing can
give a house such a homelike appearance as a thatched
roof and leaded panes, I am perfectly convinced.
To a Canadian the bird-life of the plain was mar-
vellous. There were birds by the -tens of thousands.
You would see crows settling on a spring wheat field on
the open plain by hundreds; you would see starlings
in great flocks following the plough, and gulls some-
times literally covered acres of newly ploughed ground.
One day as we approached a hamlet near
Netheravon, I fancied I was witnessing an optical illu-
sion : the whole surface of a field was covered with
black and white, vibrating as though waves were pass-
ing over it. When we came nearer we saw that the field
was covered so thick with gulls that the ground was
hidden. The gull was a small white variety about the
25
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
size of a pigeon, with a black ruff around its neck. The
wave-like motion was made by the birds digging away
in the newly turned earth for worms and larvae ; judg-
ing by the way they worked, they must have cleaned up
millions of them.
Then there were robins, thrushes, magpies, and
scores of other birds which were unfamiliar to us, while
later on the larks spiralled with delirious songs into the
sky. The pheasants were so tame they would scarcely
get out of the way of a passing car.
Salisbury Plain had evidently been the site of many
an armed camp and had probably seen many a battle
since the time of the Romans. The archaeologists in
charge of the unearthing of "Old Sarum," perhaps the
most ancient remains of a city in Great Britain, have,
during the last ten years, found many wonderful things.
Old Sarum is situated about two miles from the present
city of Salisbury on the plain. It was built on the top
of an enormous circular mound of earth several hun-
dred yards in diameter, and was supposed to have been
surrounded by the usual fosse and ditch. Roman, Saxon
and Norman remains have been, and are still being,
found, as the stonework of walls and buildings is being
uncovered. It is supposed that much of the original
stone was used in the 12th century to build the present
cathedral of Salisbury.
One day at the opposite side of the plain toward
Tinhead, Colonel (now General) Panet, of the horse
artillery, took me out to see the enormous white horse
cut in the chalk in the face of the hill ascending to
Salisbury Plain. The figure, representing King Al-
26
ON SALISBURY PLAINS
fred's famous white charger is supposed to have been
carved in King Alfred's time, to celebrate a famous vic-
tory in the neighborhood. The natives have kept the
figure ever since carved white on the hillside by the
simple process of digging away the surface earth and
sod, and leaving the underlying chalk exposed.
Stonehenge, situated in the middle of the plain, is
one of the weirdest and most interesting sights of Eng-
land. It consists of two series of colossal stone columns
arranged in circles with the lower ends stuck in the
ground, and the upper ends supporting huge slabs of
stone placed across them. A few of the stones have
fallen, and lie prone upon the ground. Perhaps no
relics in the world have caused mofe 'wonder and
evoked more speculation in the lay and scientific mind
than these curious stones standing in the middle of the
plain, miles from any town. Books have been written
about them. They are supposed to be of Phoenician
origin. Each stone weighing many tons, must have
been brought a great distance, and suggest the use of
powerful means of transport not known to-day. Hun-
dreds of thousands of people have travelled to Stone-
henge and have gone away but little wiser than when
they came. What the stones were for no man knows;
he can only speculate and wonder.
All over the plain, too, are gently rising circular
mounds called "barrows" supposed to be Roman burial
places. It is against the law to dig into them or damage
them in any way, just as it is unlawful to harm one of the
rabbits or hares, which abound on the plains. England
has laws to cover all contingencies.
27
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
In about two weeks I had completed my cam-
paign, and returned to Bustard Camp where I rounded
out my course by lecturing to the officers of the various
infantry brigades with the exception of the Highland-
ers. In this way, though the returns were not quite
completed before the division left for France, it was
estimated that 97 per cent, of the men had been inocu-
lated against typhoid fever.
During that winter the difficulties of the medical
service were very great. At the beginning of December
the manor house at Bulford was obtained as a nucleus
for a hospital and was equipped and manned by num-
ber one general hospital. Across the way from the
manor was a field which was utilized as a tent hospital
for venereal diseases. Then some new cottages just
being completed about 200 yards away were obtained
and equipped; two other houses at different places
about two miles apart were requisitioned and finally the
riding school at Netheravon was taken over as well as
some shacks for hospital purposes.
The hospital, therefore, consisted of six distinct
units spread over a five-mile area, and all operated by
the same hospital staff. It was very difficult from the
standpoint of administration, though it was excellent
training for the personnel of the hospital. At the begin-
ning it was difficult to obtain drugs. The transportation
of sick men from Pond Farm camp to Netheravon a dis-
tance of about 16 miles over very rough roads in rain
and cold can be better imagined than described. And
yet it was the best that could be done under the circum-
stances. Salisbury Plain is a great rolling field without
28
ON SALISBURY PLAINS
town or village and the places chosen were the nearest
and in fact the only places, that could be found reason-
ably close to the camp suitable for hospital purposes.
We had been reviewed by Lord Roberts and the
King early after our arrival, and now it was rumoured
that the King would review us again. Inspections of
various sorts became a daily occurrence; inspectors
from the War Office came down and condemned nearly
everything we had including motor and horse transport,
harness and other equipment. Later on we realized that
it had been very wise to sacrifice a few score thousands
of dollars worth of equipment in England in order that
standard parts and replacements of equipment could
be obtained at any time in the field and the efficiency
of the force thereby maintained at all times. The
authorities were much wiser than we knew.
Of course it rained on the morning of the day that
the King came down to review the Division ; at break-
fast the rain hammered the tin roof of our mess room
at Bustard Camp like so many hailstones and the out-
look was most gloomy. Later on it cleared, and when
the guns boomed out the royal salute announcing the ar-
rival of His Majesty, the rain had entirely ceased.
A review by the King in war time is a pretty sure
indication that the division will move shortly. I had an
excellent point of vantage on a little hill opposite the
saluting base where the King and Lord Kitchener stood.
That review was the real thing. It lacked, perhaps,
something of the wildness of the review that took place
on the sandy plains of Valcartier, but it had a dignity
that was very inspiring.
29
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
Only the division that was actually going across
was reviewed. One felt that it was the last review that
many of the men were ever destined to see and it
seemed to be peculiarly fitting that before they left for
the field of battle they should see that figure, — the head
of the Empire — that stood for freedom and that intan-
gible something that had made them come thousands
of miles to fight and, perhaps, to die.
A young officer — Captain Klotz of the third
battalion — of German descent and a very fine boy,—
sat with me and chatted for a while as we watched the
division march past. Although he was orderly officer of
his battalion he had not been able to resist the tempta-
tion to slip away for the day to see a little of the march
past. Poor chap! He was killed at the second battle of
Ypres three months afterwards. The first Canadian di-
vision as it swung past was certainly a magnificent spec-
tacle and I was quite willing to agree with a General
who told me later in the day that though he had been at
reviews for many years he had never seen such a fine
body of men in the whole of his career. The King and
Lord Kitchener both seemed to be greatly impressed
with the division.
Finally the time did arrive for the division to leave
and one night it disappeared — for Southampton every-
body thought — though an officer who had been left be-
hind sick was unable to find any trace of it later on in
the day when he arrived at that port. Certainly the
British do not tell all they know.
The impedimenta left behind in camp was some-
thing to marvel at, and included pianos, a Ford car,
30
ON SALISBURY PLAINS
gramophones, bayonets, rifles and many other things.
Why a man should leave behind his rifle, and how he
managed to do so without getting caught, will probably
always remain a mystery. The first Canadian Division
had passed on to the great adventure in Flanders.
31
CHAPTER III
EARLY WAR DAYS IN LONDON.
IN the early part of our sojourn in England I was sent
to London on duty. On the surface the city looked
about as usual, except that the taxi-cabs, buildings and
squares, were plastered with recruiting posters, the
chief ones reading "Your King and Country need you"
and "Enlist to-day." After you had read them a couple
of thousand times they met your eyes with no more
significance than do the bricks in a wall or the people
in a crowd.
London at night, however, was much different, be-
cause the city was in darkness. The system of darken-
ing adopted was rather amusing, as all the squares and
circuses, which in other times were most brilliantly
illuminated, now were darker than the streets, the con-
trast making them, to an aviator, as distinguishable as
before. Later on more judgment was used in the control
of lighting, as well as many other things in England.
Soldiers were plentiful on the streets and in the
theatres, hotels and restaurants, — soldiers on leave from
the various camps. But we were more inclined to notice
the tens of thousands of physically fit men walking
about in civilian clothes. Nobody seemed particularly
disturbed about the war. Kitchener was raising his
army, and "the Navy, thank God! was in excellent
shape. Just wait till the Spring, and Emperor Bill
32
EARLY WAR DAYS IN LONDON
would get his bumps. We are willing to go if they
need us but not till they do. Why worry?"
In Clubland the difference was very marked — it
had been deserted by the younger men, and the clubs
sheltered only a few of the older men who had nowhere
else to go. For, be it said to the eternal glory of the
man-about-town, — the wealthy knut who knew little
more perhaps than to run an expensive car, give ex-
pensive dinners and get into trouble — the upper class
drone — that he was among the first to volunteer and get
into active service. Perhaps all he could do was drive
a car; if so he did it — drove a London bus out at the
front, or a wagon; or did anything else at which he
would be useful. Many of the idle rich young men,
and the majority of the young titled men of England,
rose to the occasion and went out and fought and died,
and many now lie buried in Flanders for the sake of
Old England — for the freedom of the world.
These posters shouting for recruits somehow did
not look like England; they were too hysterical; they
were not effective : London, with more posters per head
of population than any other city in the Empire, re-
cruited men less swiftly than any other place.
Thousands of sight-seers crowded to the football
matches while the newspapers vainly lashed themselves
into fury. It was only when Lloyd George asked for
more men, and gave convincing reasons that they were
needed, that the country responded. Day by day the
newspapers made the best of bad news from the front,
and day by day did the readers thereof conclude that
England was doing well, and they "supposed that she
33
4
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
would bungle through." No man of prophetic foresight
had yet risen to say "This is a life and death struggle for
us ; we need every man in the country, and every shilling
to win the war." The common talk was that we had
stepped in to keep our treaty with France and to assist
poor Belgium, whose neutrality had been violated.
Englishmen did not feel that England's fall was first
and last the object of Germany's ambition. They did
not realize that Germany saw in England the nation
which was always thwarting her and frustrating her
desire for "a place in the sun."
Should the theatres be kept open? should German
waiters be still allowed in the hotels? should German
music be played at Queen's Hall? should horse rac-
ing be continued? — these were the questions whose dis-
cussion occupied a considerable amount of space in the
newspapers. Of course the theatres kept open, German
music was played, and horse racing continued : A large
section of the public had to be amused, and the liveli-
hood of the actors and actresses and their relatives de-
pended upon it; if all German music were eliminated
there would be little left to choose from; and the im-
portant racing horse industry could not be allowed to
languish on account of a mere vulgar war.
So everything went on as before war-time except
that gradually the German waiters disappeared.
"Business as usual" was the slogan, for the ordinary
business man rather fancied that he belonged to a nation
great enough to carry on war as a side issue without
seriously altering its daily routine.
34
EARLY WAR DAYS IN LONDON
For a while the big hotels and restaurants had a
bad time of it, and the management of the Cecil and
Savoy thought of closing down. At this trying junc-
ture Sir Sam Hughes, Minister of Militia for Canada,
arrived in London and put up at the Savoy; other offi-
cers came to see him and stayed there also. Temporary
offices were opened ; men looking for contracts frequent-
ed the place and the Savoy quickly became the Cana-
dian headquarters in London.
Special rates for rooms were given Canadian offi-
cers and it was possible to obtain a magnificently fur-
nished, steam-heated room for no more than was paid
at other hotels for much inferior accommodation. The
Savoy Hotel, warm, comfortable and American like,
located at the heart of things, close to the theatre dis-
trict and the War Office, had a "homey" appeal to us,
and it speedily became the centre of all things Cana-
dian in London; and the patronage of the Canadians
tided it over a bad financial period.
If you knew that one of your Canadian friends was
in London, all you had to do was to sit in the rotunda
of the Savoy and watch the door. You would be sure
to see him come through those revolving doors some
time during the day. In that rotunda I met men whom
I went to school with, men who lived in my own city,
but whom I had not seen for 20 years; others whom
I met there had travelled all over creation since I had
last seen them. It soon got to be quite the natural
thing to meet old friends in this way.
In theatre land the problem play had disappeared
as if by magic. Several attempts to revive former suc-
35
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
cesses of this type proved absolute failures and the plays
were quickly withdrawn ; now there were real tragedies
to think about, and the old threadbare, domestic tri-
angle disappeared from the boards. Revues and musi-
cal comedies succeeded, and 'The Man Who Stayed at
Home" a war spy play was a tremendous success, as
were the comedies "When Knights Were Bold" and
"Potash and Perlmutter." To be a success a play had
to have the merit of real comedy, or touch some national
sensibility of the moment.
No new great literature had appeared, nor had the
tragedy of the world yet brought forth any great poetry.
Monographs on special phases of German character,
thought and culture, were plentiful in the bookstalls,
and translations of Bernhardi and Treitschke sold in
vast numbers.
The love of music, so strong in England, was shown
by the crowded attendances at the Queen's Hall and the
Albert Hall concerts. A good deal of Russian music
was heard, the Russian National Anthem being played
on every possible occasion. At the Christmas season
not a seat was empty at any of the presentations of the
Messiah at Albert Hall. Yet curiously enough Eng-
land had banished her military bands, one of the
most effective aids to recruiting, and it was only after
a violent newspaper controversy on the subject had
taken place that she used them again.
Down in the city in Cheapside scarcely a uniform
was to be seen ; the heart of ancient London seemed to
beat as usual. In the theatre district at night, particu-
larly on the Strand, Leicester Square and Piccadilly
36
EARLY WAR DAYS IN LONDON
Circus, crowds of women promenaded as usual, like
spiders hunting for their prey. And the prey was there
too, wanting to be hunted.
This is one of the great tragedies of London, — the
terrible maelstrom of fallen humanity which is allowed
to circulate there year after year, sweeping into its
vortex tens and hundreds of thousands of boys and girls,
who, but for it, might and probably would escape. In
war time when soldiers were involved, it was more ter-
rible than ever, for the results, as the medical men saw
them, were disastrous from the military standpoint
alone.
From this great ulcer in the heart of London a
dealy poison passes far and wide into the national
organism. The ulcer is there still for the knife of some
strong man to excise, for there is little doubt that though
restrictions will not prevent vice, it is equally true that
making vice open, enticing and easy, increases it.
During that first winter, tickets for the theatre were
sold at half price to men in uniform. On the other
hand, an officer's uniform seemed to be the signal for
increased prices in the shops, particularly in the smaller
ones. A London physician, an officer, told me that
when he went shopping he always dressed in civilian
clothes because it was so much more economical to
shop as a civilian.
The badge "Canada" of; course, had been the
badge for high prices from the day we landed in Ply-
mouth. It was "Canada, our emblem dear" in very
truth. It was well known that the Canadian Tommy
received a dollar and ten cents a day, whereas the Bri-
37
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
tish Tommy received only 25 cents, and it was assumed
that officers were correspodingly better paid than the
British officer, while as a matter of fact, we received
less, rank for rank. The question of overcharging
Canadans became such a scandal that later on it was
brought up in the House of Commons in an endeavour
to fix prices for certain commodities in the Canadian
Shorncliffe area.
The story is told of a Canadian going into a store
and asking the youngster in charge the price of some
article. The youngster called up stairs and the answer
came back Is. lOd. "But it is a Canadian" said the child ;
"Oh, 2s. 6d." came back the answer.
The war in France was but faintly felt in England
in those early days. There had been no invasion of
English soil such as had galvanized France into a united
endeavour to repel the invader. No Zeppelins had yet
dropped bombs on England. Great Britain had sent
an expedition to France, — "An Expeditionary Force"
it was called. The very name did not seem even to
suggest a nation in arms. And yet away down under-
neath it all England was uneasy. Well-informed people
whose sons were at the front knew the seriousness of
the whole business. Casualties had returned in large
numbers, and the rolls of honour published showed
the terrible hammering England's wonderful little
army was being subjected to on the continent. Those
despised Germans had made great headway, and there
were doubts as to whether the French were sufficiently
well equipped to stand the tremendous pressure put
upon them.
38
EARLY WAR DAYS IN LONDON
The battle off Chili had only been wiped out by
Sturdee's victory, and the exploits of certain raiders and
submarines made the Briton realize that the control of
the oceans of the earth was a big undertaking. The
rallying of the colonies to his assistance touched him
greatly, and made him feel proud ; on the other hand,
strikes for higher pay in munition factories and ship
yards angered and disgusted him.
There was no great leadership anywhere, and the
Englishman in his heart of hearts knew it. Lloyd
George, whom he acknowledged to be the only genius in
the Government, he either idolized or cursed, accord-
ing to whether he approved of his socialistic ideas or
not. Englishmen I talked to, even in France later on,
fairly foamed at the mouth when the little Welshman's
name was mentioned, and refused to read the "Times"
which they said was run by "that traitor NorthclifTe."
It was all very interesting to us, who hoped against
hope that the man who to our perspective was the one
great man of vision would be given the opportunity to
become the man of action.
It was when one reached the heart of things, the
War Office, that one began to realize the undercurrents
which were being set up in the national life as a result
of the war. In the court yard of the War Office, which
was carefully guarded by policemen, were large num-
bers of women, young and old, waiting for news of son
or husband, wounded or killed. The looks on their faces
were sufficient evidence of tragedies which were increas-
ing from day to day, and which would eventually waken
England. Inside the door was a reception room where
39
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
those who had business of any sort showed their cre-
dentials, signed the necessary form, and were sent on
to the various departments to charge of a boy scout.
Cots in the corridors, and specially walled-off offices
indicated the expansion going on in the various depart-
ments.
The war office authorities were going at the prob-
lem in hand is a most unbusiness like way as far as
the enlisting of recruits was concerned but already had
800,000 men in training in England. Those in train-
ing were not even equipped with rifles and uniforms.
After all the fault-finding in Canada before we left
about the slowness in getting us away it was interesting
to learn that our contingent had probably been more
quickly outfitted and prepared for the field than any
other territorial or militia unit in the Empire.
In the course of my stay I dined at many of the
famous London restaurants, but the larger ones were
usually empty and depressing. One had to eat some-
where and one might as well take every possible oppor-
tunity of seeing this phase of life in London in war time.
One night at the "Carlton" there were not twenty
others present; even the waiters seemed to be dejected,
probably at the falling off of their revenue from tips,
and we left as soon as possible and went over to the
Royal Automobile Club in search of something brighter.
There we found a cheery log fire and sat in front of it
until early morning, talking of the war.
One heard the Russian and French national an-
thems very frequently, not only in the streets, but in
the theatres and public performances, such as those in
40
EARLY WAR DAYS IN LONDON
Queen's Hall. The finest playing of any national
anthem that I have ever listened to was the London
Symphony Orchestra's rendering of The Russian
National Anthem one Monday night with SafanofI
conducting; it was sublime. I had heard the same
number on the preceding day in the same hall by
another orchestra and the difference was remarkable;
—the first one sounding like an amateur organization
in comparison. No orchestra ever impressed me as
did the London Symphony Orchestra, with the possible
exception of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
To be in London, not sixty miles from the firing
line, in a city firmly convinced of coming Zeppelin raids
and prepared for naval raids, and find the press discuss-
ing the plays and the music of the day seemed strange
indeed. It must have made the men in the trenches
nearly mad to realize that while they were fighting
under the most adverse conditions day by day and being
killed in the defence of their homeland, there were 30,-
000 slackers at one football match at home.
England is a strange country. We felt that per-
haps if a force of 50,000 or 100,000 Germans would
land in England she would waken from the lotig sleep
she had slept since her shores had been invaded by
William the Conqueror. 30,000 men could watch a
football match at the very moment the British line in
Flanders was actually so thin that if the Germans had
tried to advance there was nothing to stop them. For-
tunately, for the moment, the enemy, too, was exhausted
and before he could recuperate our reinforcements
had arrived.
41
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
The dying session of parliament was worth going
to see; Bonar Law, Beresford, McKenna, and Winston
Churchill spoke. The latter made his defence of the
Navy which was as famous and as reassuring to the
country as Kitchener's statement in the house of Lords
the day before had been in regard to the Army. Mr.
Bonar Law was the smoothest of the speakers; Church-
ill gave one the impression of having much force of
character, despite his stuttering, but Bonar Law was
the man you felt could be trusted to look upon any
proposition with coolness and play the safe game for
his country.
When the House was adjourned until February
2nd, there were very few members left. This closing
of the House of Parliament after a three weeks' session
in war time and after the raising of billions of dollars
of war loan by public subscription was remarkable
for its simplicity. There was no fuss or feathers, no
music or formality. The members just strolled out—
those that happened to be there.
From the great window of the Savoy Hotel, I
watched the funeral of Lord Roberts, the national hero.
The Thames embankment could be seen, but, though
a garden of not fifty yards in width separated the build-
ing from the embankment, the fog was thick enough
to make the people as indistinct as though they had
been half a mile away. Beyond the embankment the
grey wall of fog shut out everything but an occasional
gull which flitted out for a moment and disappeared
again.
The embankment road was lined with Highland
42
EARLY WAR DAYS IN LONDON
soldiers in khaki greatcoats and Scotch caps, drawn up
in quarter companies, while on either side of the road
stood a solid black wall of humanity — waiting, some
with umbrellas up to protect them from the fine drizzle.
Not a hundred yards away Cleopatra's needle stood like
a tall sentinel in the mist, and one wondered what tales
of battle and heroic deeds it could tell, if it could speak.
One could imagine that during the long ages it must
have witnessed other magnificent funerals of kings and
heroes, and smiled, perhaps, at the brevity of human
life.
The silence was broken by the long roll of kettle-
drums, and the strains of Chopin's funeral march
floated to us through the heavy air; sadder than ever
before they seemed to me, and yet, too, more dignified
than ever before. Then along the embankment, past
Cleopatra's needle, the head of the procession burst up
through the fog as though coming out of the ground.
The band came first, followed by the London Scot-
tish with arms reversed, the brass butts of the guns
visible before the soldiers themselves, making a curious
reflection in the fog.
Then followed other regiments of infantry, squad-
rons of horses, Indian troops with strangely-laden
mules, guns; then, more cavalry. The horses sent out
great spurts of steam from their nostrils into the cold
raw air.
Then a space, and the funeral car drawn by
six horses with riders approached. The coffin, covered
with a Union Jack, looked very small, and a big lump
came into my throat as I realized that this was all that
43
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
remained of the great little soldier, whose motor car not
three weeks before at Salisbury Plain had stopped be-
side mine, and whose deeply seamed and furrowed face
I had studied with the greatest interest, remarking then
that he looked very, very old.
After the car, the General's horse, with boots re-
versed in the stirrups, was led, — riderless.
Next came a dozen or more coaches bearing the
mourners, including the King, and the pall-bearers, one
of whom was Lord Kitchener. Squadron after squad-
ron of cavalry filed past two and two, until one felt
the procession was never going to end. The fog thinned
somewhat, and a tug and scow whirled past down the
river on the rapidly flowing tide, disappearing again
into the mist.
As the last horses disappeared, the crowd began to
move; motor cars appeared; and the cortege of one of
the greatest British generals passed on to St. Paul's, the
last resting place of the great soldiers and sailors of the
Empire.
One felt that Lord Roberts was greater than all
those soldiers who had gone before him, for his life had
been without blemish. Seldom — indeed, never before
— had any British soldier or statesman the opportunity
to say to the nation "I told you so." For ten years with-
out avail, Lord Roberts had been warning the nation
about the great need of being prepared for a war that
was bound to come; he had tried by every possible
means to wake it from its sleep and had failed; and
when the great war came as he said it would, he offered
no word in the way or reproach or self glorification,
44
EARLY WAR DAYS IN LONDON
\
but bent all his energies to help his Empire to his
utmost in the hour of her greatest need. And although
he "passed over" before victory had come to us, he
had seen enough to know that the ultimate result would
bring security to the Empire and freedom to the human
race.
45
CHAPTER IV.
DAYS WHEN THINGS WENT WRONG.
ONE day things went wrong; they are always going
wrong in the army, — that is part of the game. It
takes a considerable portion of an officer's time correct^
ing mistakes of brother officers; otherwise there
wouldn't be much to do in peace times.
Well, as I was saying, things went wrong. We had
been on the qui vive for two weeks, expecting a telegram
from the war office to leave for France. We had every-
thing ready to pack aboard the motor truck in one hour.
Then, by diligent enquiry, we discovered that our truck
was to go to France when a spare convoy of trucks went
over.
The Colonel in charge at Bulford Camp said it
would not be this week — there might possibly be a
convoy going over the next week or the week after—
or next month — he could not really say when. He had
a letter from the war office on his desk about the matter
and would notify us at the earliest possible moment.
We went away tearing our hair out, and we have
no superfluous hair to lose. We held a council of war.
We leaped into our trusty car and sped swiftly into
Salisbury. The Canadian General, the object of our
quest, had just left for Shorncliff and would be back,
perhaps, in two or three days. We hunted for the
A.A. & Q.M.G. of the 2nd Canadian Division. After
searching the register of three hotels we ran across an
46
DAYS WHEN THINGS WENT WRONG
officer who said that the A.A. & Q.M.G. had also gone
to Shorncliff. We had arrived too late to obtain assis-
tance from this quarter.
As it was now after 7 o'clock we had to have dinner.
This was on ordeal for we hated the Salisbury hotels;
they had been so crowded that winter with Canadian
officers and their wives that the proprietors had lost
their heads. They didn't care whether they served
you or not. One of them even paid a "boots" to stand
at the door and insult possible guests, the idea being to
turn as many away as possible. The hotel keepers must
have heaped up untold wealth that winter, and the
abundance of custom had ruined their sense of hospi-
tality.
So we discarded the idea of a hotel dinner. We
referred to our chauffeur, who was "some chauffeur,
believe me." "What about that little chop house (The
Silver Grill') which he had frequently lauded with ful-
some praise?" He did not now wax enthusiastic — a
point we noted, and of which we found the explanation
—but he drove us there.
The Silver Grill was a curious old place, with
winding stair-case, ancient beamed ceilings in the smok-
ing-room, and a general appearance indicating that it
had seen service at least two hundred years. Climbing
to the attic, we entered a little dining room, perhaps
twenty feet long, with room for about sixteen diners.
The tables were occupied chiefly by officers, and we
took the settee next the wall and ordered the chef
d'ceuvre — a steak smothered in onions, and French fried
potatoes.
47
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
Norah, the one serving maid, a pretty little thing,
was evidently a great favorite with the habituees of the
place. The wife of the proprietor was a handsome big
woman dressed in a close fitting black frock, with the
figure of a Venus de Milo. She hovered about talking
to the men and acting "mother" to them all. One
officer was plainly "overseas". The landlady watched
him like a sister, got him to put his hat and coat on
properly and steered him past the smoking-room and
bar to the front door, and she was careful to explain to
us two, knowing we were Canadians, "I have never
seen Captain X like that before. You know we have be-
come very fond of the Canadians. Poor Lt. — who was
killed last week came to wish me good-bye." And,
dropping into a chair beside us, she talked of this and
that Canadian officer; of how nearly all the medical
men and veterinary officers had dined at the Grill ; she
told us also about her three children, including the baby
which was now eight months old and could talk.
By this time all the diners had gone except one,
a civilian, sitting in the farthest corner of the room.
The land-lady had again begun to talk about the Cana-
dians, when the civilian suddenly interrupted sneer-
ingly "The Canadians! what good are they? An ex-
pense to the country. What have they done? If I
had my way I'd hang every one of them."
For a moment we were petrified with anger. "What
do you mean?" I finally managed to demand.
"Oh! you know" he sneered.
"No I don't" I returned; "that is strange talk; you
will have to explain yourself."
48
DAYS WHEN THINGS WENT WRONG
"I don't need to explain anything" he said.
"Then allow me to tell you that you are a d—
liar" put in Captain E — glaring at the man ferocious-
ly; "I say you are a d — liar" repeated the Captain with
greater emphasis and deliberation.
But the cad was very thick-skinned; he made not
the slightest show of resentment at the opprobrious
epithet. So we got up and walked over to him.
"You miserable shrimp" said Captain E — as he
stood over the fellow with hands a-twitching to take
hold of him. "You mean, skulking coward, to talk like
that of men who have come over to fight in the place of
wretched gutter-snipes and quitters like you."
"Three of us here are Canadians" I added, "and
if you will be so accomodating as to step outside, any
one of us will be delighted to give you the darndest
licking you ever got in your life."
The skulker didn't even move. Captain E — got
worked up to the point of explosion as he watched the
fellow unconcernedly keep on eating. "You snivelling
cur "I've a good mind to rub your face in that gravy,
by G — I will rub it in that gravy!" exploded the Cap-
tain, and in the instant he seized the dinner-plate in
one hand and the fellow's head in the other and brought
them quickly together, rubbing the man's chin and nose
briskly round and round in the mixture of congealing
gravy and potatoes.
"Be very careful what you are about" sputtered the
creature, looking up when Captain E — had desisted,
and wiping the streaming grease from his face with
his pocket-handkerchief.
49
5
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
It was tremendously ludicrous; the utter spine-
lessness of the creature so at variance with the boastful
scorn of his previous words and tone so obviously
showed him to be a coward that all we could do was
laugh and turn away. You could no more think of strik-
ing that weak, backboneless poltroon than of hitting a
six months' old baby.
We tendered the landlady a sovereign in payment
for our dinner, but she only kept eying with intense
anger and disgust and shame this wretched specimen of
a fellow-countryman who had wantonly insulted two of
her colonial guests in her house and in her presence.
During the gravy-rubbing performance she had run
downstairs to tell her husband in case there should be
a "scene," and he had retailed the story to the crowd
of "select patrons" gathered in the little smoking-room.
Again we called the lady's attention to the proffered
coin, but in her agitation, it took her at least five minutes
to total our bill correctly.
We offered our apologies for our forcible language,
but she considered no apology necessary. "You were
insulted in my house" she said, "and I admire you for
the stand you took. That man will never enter this
place again." Following us downstairs she begged us
to step into the smoking-room "just a minute, to see
that all our customers are not like that one" and when
she thought we were not going to accede to her request
she laid a hand on my arm and almost beseeched me to
come back and have a cup of coffee or something to
drink.
Her husband, a fine looking, tall, curly-headed
50
DAYS WHEN THINGS WENT WRONG
Englishman, seconded her invitation, and we went back
to the smoking-room. As we entered, every man stood
up and bowed, and several made room for us. They
had heard the story, and, by their reception of us they
tried to show that they strongly disapproved of their
countryman's insult to the colonials.
A few minutes afterwards, the clock struck nine,
and the doors were closed upon all but Captain Ellis
and myself. Nothing was too good for us, and to the
accompaniment of numerous cups of coffee, brought by
Norah, we talked away till ten o'clock. Both the land-
lord and his wife walked out to our car with us, and
continued to offer their regrets for the treatment which
we had received.
By the time we got "home" we were fairly cooled
off, and we went to bed that night with the proud feel-
ing that we had saved the name of Canada.
Another time "things went wrong" was one Satur-
day afternoon when we took a half-day off. It was not
that we needed the holiday from overwork, because,
for two weeks, three of the four of us had been doing
nothing. The fourth man, a captain of Highland de-
scent, had, unlike the rest of us, really been working
hard. Yet we all needed the holiday, for loafing any-
where is usually the hardest work in the world; but
loafing on the edge of Salisbury Plain with little to
see was work even harder than the hardest. Napoleon
is said to have remarked that "war is made up of short
periods of intense activity followed by much longer
periods of enforced idleness" or something to that effect.
Of the "intense activity" of war we as yet had had no
51
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
experience but with "enforced idleness," we were all
too distressingly familiar. In civilian life we had been
very busy men ; and here we had been plunged into a
world where for months at a time there was almost
nothing to do — and what was worse, there was no place
to go to and forget about it.
So, after a hard two-week's work doing nothing,
we studied the map and decided that the sea was within
easy range of our four-cylinder thirty. Accordingly we
struck out for the sea, followed the track of the little
river Avon, which flows past Salisbury Plain, through
Amesbury and the ancient city of Salisbury and empties
into the British channel at Christchurch.
It was a glorious March afternoon, with intervals
of brilliant sunshine; the roads were good, and we
rolled along through the little English villages with
their thatched-roofs, at a speed which quickly brought
us to the New Forest. All of a sudden a strange, famil-
iar tang in the air thrilled us. Every man sat instantly
erect and gulped down, in wonderment at his own ac-
tion, a succession of great, deep satisfying breaths :
And then the explanation broke from two of us at the
same moment, "Canada!" It was the familiar Cana-
dian smell of the autumn forest fires that had for the
moment penetrated from the outward senses to the in-
most soul of each and it left us for the moment just the
least bit homesick.
Less than an hour and a half brought us to the
prosperous city of Bournemouth, filled with the omni-
present "Tommy." The sea looked mighty good to
us, for we hadn't seen it since our landing in October,
52
DAYS WHEN THINGS WENT WRONG
though we had seen plenty of water — rain water — since.
We raced our car along the beach, got out and snap-
shotted one another, admired the views, and cut up
generally like a gang of boys let loose from school.
Then somebody said "tea," and we drove to a little
rather suspicious looking "Pub" on the beach.
There we got tea and toast but we didn't stay long,
for out of the window we could see the chauffeur under-
cross-fire of a policeman, and in England that always
means trouble.
An itinerant dog fancier had two diminutive "Nor-
wegian truffle 'unters" which he was anxious to part
with, but we couldn't wait to talk to him. Nor had we
time to ask him whether truffle growing was an industry
in Norway, or whether the substituting of dogs for pigs
in hunting truffles was a recent innovation.
The Cop had been watching for us from across the
way, and we were hardly out when he was already upon
us." "Excuse me, sir, but you 'aven't a hidentification
number on your car" said the Cop.
"We have not" I replied, "what is the sense of hav-
ing a number?"
"To hidentify the car, sir," said the Cop.
"Can't you identify the car with that label on" I
queried, pointing to the bonnet upon which was a label
reading: Canadian Government; the car also had three
O.H.M.S. signs upon it.
"Our orders is, sir, to see that all cars on 'is
Majesty's service 'ave Hidentification numbers" persist-
ed the Cop.
"We are very sorry," I replied, "that we had our
S3
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
identification all printed out so that you could read it,
instead of getting a number; it was stupid of us."
"Orders is orders" said the Cop.
"You people make me sick" suddenly broke in
Mac. "We came over here to fight for you and all you
do for us is make it as damned disagreeable as possible;
you are a miserable people."
"Pardon me, sir" said the Cop softly, "I thought
I was speaking to a gentleman." During the contro-
versy we had got into our car and without ceremony we
drove off, leaving behind us a discomfited policeman.
Fortunately Mac had not heard the parting remark of
the policeman. Had he done so it is doubtful if we
would have left Bournemouth that night, for heaven
only knows what would have happened to that police-
man. When I chaffed him by repeating the police-
man's sally when we were a mile away, Mac was for
a moment knocked speechless with anger, then be
begged us to go back and help him find the policeman.
Having escaped the arm of the law we went for a
little drive about town, with its wonderful shops: the
shops of Bournemouth are the best I have seen in Eng-
land, and are rivalled only by those of Glasgow. Then
we drew up at the best hotel in town — "The Royal Bath
Hotel," which, with its long low facade and its lack of
upper stories looked more like a luxurious club house
than a modern hotel.
The main lounge was something to marvel at.
Apparently it had been given over to a band of decora-
tors and furnishers gone delirious, for the evidence of
their delirium was to be seen on every side. The walls
54
DAYS WHEN THINGS WENT WRONG
were all broken up : One wall was covered with hang-
ings; two parts of the remainder had an upper border
of hand-painted men in battle array; a glass wall
through which the dining-room could be seen made a
third ; and the fourth was occupied by a balcony from
which one descended scarlet carpeted stairways into
the room.
The woodwork was a hideous golden-oak. The
ceiling was broken by a series of beams radiating un-
evenly from one annular space, in all directions, and
with no apparent design. The furniture was rattan
and plush, upholstered and plain, and was crowded to-
gether with a few writing tables scattered here and
there. It was a discordant orgie of decorative effects
and the result was unutterably depressing.
We sank into chairs and gazed about us in awe.
No hotel had ever affected any of us like this before.
At first we talked in whispers; then as our courage
revived, we became critical. Then somebody thought
of having a "Scoot"; tremulously he pressed the button
for the waiter. The waiter came and they had two
"Scoots" each. Then somebody made a funny remark
and one of us laughed out loud. Suddenly the laugher
stopped and said, "I feel as if I ought not to laugh; I
feel that nobody ever laughed in this place before."
Dinner time approached. Old ladies in wonderful
dresses began to appear, followed by old English gentle-
men in dress clothes. The dining-room began to fill up.
We decided to wait till the room was nearly full before
going in so that we could get an idea of the fashionable
watering place people of England. Somebody thought
55
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
that it would be as well to reserve a table, and Captain
R — was deputed to do so. In fifteen minutes he came
back twisting his black moustache and looking de-
pressed.
"Nothing doing," he reported in disappointment.
"What!" we cried.
"Nothing doing" he repeated mechanically. "We
may possibly get a table after 8.30."
"Do you mean to say" cried Mac, jumping from
his chair in a rage, "that we can't get anything to eat?"
Captain R — nodded. "Let's leave this d — morgue;
I hate it anyway" stormed Mac, and we filed sadly out.
In the hall we had a try with the head clerk, and
another with the head waiter, but it was no use. "Guests
must be served first" was the only argument; pointing
out that there were a dozen tables yet unset made no
difference. Our chauffeur had gone, so we left our
address for him, ordered a taxi, and drove to the Bur-
lington Hotel two miles away. Before dismissing the
taxi we took the precaution of seeing that we could get
dinner, and finding that the hotel authorities agreed to
furnish us with a meal we clambered out; after divest-
ing ourselves of our overcoats we were ushered into
a dining room crowded with beautiful women and,
mostly, ugly men. There were some hummers among
the women.
The relief at the change from the dismal, delirious-
ly-decorated hotel to this bright, cheery room, was to
great that we suddenly grew exceedingly gay and en-
joyed ourselves hugely. A little concert afterwards add-
56
DAYS WHEN THINGS WENT WRONG
cd to the enjoyment, which was only slightly marred
by a bill for forty-two shillings.
Our homeward journey was through little villages
all asleep, and silent as the adjacent churchyards; and
as we two tumbled into our cots at midnight we voted
that we had spent "a fine day" in spite of the mischiev-
ous tendency of things "to go wrong."
Another of these "days" came later. We had been
waiting at Bulford Cottage for three weeks for orders
from the war office to leave for France, and we were
growing decidedly fidgety. The fine weather feeling of
Spring in the air may have had something to do with our
restlessness. The buds were swelling on the great trees
near by, and the leaves had actually broken from their
bonds on some of the hedges. The air was full of bird
songs ; the lark in particular seemed to be mad with the
joy of springtime. At Bulford Manor I had picked
the first wall-flowers in bloom in the open garden; Ro-
man Hyacinths, Daffodils, Snowdrops, English daisies,
and another little unfamiliar white flower were in
blossom, and even the Japonica was bursting into scarlet
against the sunny walls.
It was a pleasant time for loafing and under any
other circumstances we would have enjoyed it; but this
was war time. Already our Canadian Division had
been at the front for four weeks and here were we doing
nothing, when we might have been making ourselves
useful at the front. The war office was advertising for
"one hundred sanitary officers who would be of vital
service to the force in the field" and here were two of
us, with long experience in practical sanitation and
57
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
eager to make use of that experience, idling in the
valley of the Avon on Salisbury Plain.
Our chief was in France, and in our impatience
we concluded that something had gone wrong at the
war office in regard to our little unit. The only way
to find out was to go to London; so we set out, — the
Medical Officer of Health of Ottawa, Captain Lomer;
the provincial bacteriologist of Alberta, Captain Ran-
kin; and myself. We left Bulford at eleven o'clock, or
to be precise, at five minutes to eleven. We stopped
twenty minutes at Andover to send a cablegram, and
were held up at a level crossing for five minutes. At
one thirty we passed the official centre of London, Hyde
Park corner, and were having our dinner in the Mar-
guereta Restaurant in Oxford Street at a quarter to two.
We therefore had covered the distance of ninety-eight
miles in two hours and fifteen minutes actual travelling
time, or at an average speed of nearly forty-four miles
an hour. At one time our indicator registered sixty-
five miles an hour and for quite a number of miles we
travelled steadily at fifty-six miles an hour. Of course
this was in England, where roads are as smooth as as-
phalt and where raised or sunken culverts, the curse
of motorists, are unknown.
We did enjoy that Bohemian dinner. We had all
the things that one does not have in a military mess on
Salisbury Plain. Hors d'ceuvres, salad, fish, duck, and
so forth. We were just finishing, and had lit our cigar-
ettes while waiting for coffee, when the door porter
came in and whispered to Captain Rankin that a police-
man had our chauffeur in charge and wanted to see one
58
DAYS WHEN THINGS WENT WRONG
of us. The doughty Captain went out, and came back in
a minute to say that the cop wanted him to go to the
police station and explain why we did not have a number
on our motor. He also added that there was a number
of people around the car. "What did you tell him?"
I asked. "I said I would go after I had finished my
• dinner," said the Captain, which seemed to me quite
Canadian and reasonable.
He had not raised his cup to his lips when the
same porter tapped him a second time on the shoulder,
with "Beg pardon, sir, but the officer says he can't wait."
We were grieved, and looked it.
"It's very unreasonable," said the Captain, "to dis-
turb us at dinner like this."
"If we don't go now I guess it will take a good deal
longer to get the car away from the police station," I
said. "Besides, supposing Rad has cheeked them and
they lock him up, we won't be able to get back till to-
morrow. None of us can run the car well enough to
get out of London without getting into a smash up."
So saying, I put on my coat and sallied forth.
Before I got to the front door I could tell there was
something doing, for the restaurant windows were filled
with diners standing on chairs. Through a vacant space
I could see a great crowd and two policemen's helmets
standing up above the middle of the throng. They con-
siderately opened a passage up for me to the two police-
men who \yere standing beside the car with Rad at the
wheel looking quite unconcerned.
"What is the matter?" I demanded.
"Your car has no number on it," said a policeman.
59
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
It was so similar to our experience the week before
at Bournemouth that I smiled inwardly, and went
through the same formula.
"Why should a government car have a number?" I
asked.
"To identfy it, sir, those are our orders, sir."
"Can't you identify that car?" I asked. "It says,
written in big letters on the front, "Canadian Govern-
ment, Divisional Headquarters," in case you can't read!
The car belongs to the Canadian Government. We are
waiting to go to France ; we came into London less than
an hour ago on business to the War Office. Is there
anything more you want?"
"We would like the chauffeur's name," said the cub
policeman, who had caused the trouble. I spelled it
out to him three times; it sounded very German, but
he said nothing."
Then in turn I took out my note book and took the
numbers of the policemen. The crowd had listened
with great interest, and were evidently against the
policemen. A boy looked under a policeman's arm and
grinned ; I winked at him covertly, and he went into a
paroxysm of laughter. Then with dignity I got into the
car and we drove off to the bank, leaving behind the
discomfited policemen and a crowd of several hundred
people.
"Where did the cop get hold of you, Rad?" I en-
quired.
"Over on Bond Street," he said, "he insisted on my
going to the police station with him. "All right," I
said, "jump in, and he did so. I knew where the police
60
DAYS WHEN THINGS WENT WRONG
station was in a street off Oxford Street, but when we got
to the street I passed it. The officer called out, but I
didn't hear him. At the next corner he yelled again,
but I got in front of a convenient bus."
"Why didn't you turn there," he said.
"Then you would have had a real charge against
me," I said, "for breaking the rules of traffic."
Finally he asked "Are you going to turn or not?"
and I said "I guess we will turn here and turned around,
stopping in front of the Marguereta Restaurant."
"What are you stopping for?" he asked.
"The officers who are in charge of the car are in
there at their dinner," I said, "you had better speak to
them. Gee, he was mad."
All the rest of the afternoon I chuckled with de-
light at the picture of the anger of that cub six foot
two policeman as he was being whirled along Oxford
Street against his will, to a restaurant he did not want to
go to, to meet people he didn't want to see.
61
CHAPTER V.
THE LOST CANADIAN LABORATORY.
AT the War Office in London, in the autumn of
1914, I met Captain Sydney Rowland of the staff
of the Lister Institute. He was a man who had made
a reputation in the scientific world and had just been
authorized by the British War Office to purchase a
huge motor caravan to be equipped as a mobile labora-
tory. The caravan had been built originally by a weal-
thy automobile manufacturer at a cost of 5,000 pounds,
and had been completely equipped for living in while
touring the country. It even had a little kitchen, and
the whole affair was lined with aluminium. Tiring
of it, the builder had sold it to a bookmaker who used
it for less legitimate purposes.
Captain Rowland had heard of this machine and
finally located and purchased it. All the expensive in-
terior was torn out and replaced with work benches
and sinks, while shelves and racks were provided for
glassware and apparatus. It was a beautifully equipped,
compact machine, and he was justly proud of it.
When he took it over to France he drove it up to
the army area himself, and told me that as he ap-
proached the front through villages and towns at the
rate of twenty-five miles an hour he had an absolutely
unimpeded road. After one look at this huge affair,
which was about the size of one of our large moving
vans, bearing down on them like a runaway house,
62
THE LOST CANADIAN LABORATORY
people fled or took to the side roads. Captain Rowland
described with great glee the sensation it had caused,
and his enjoyment of that drive.
That was the first mobile laboratory, the beginning
of the field laboratories and the model upon which
all others were constructed. The list of equipment pre-
pared and used by Captain Rowland was also used as
the basis for the requirements for all mobile labora-
tories subsequently equipped. A second bacteriological
laboratory and two hygiene laboratories were sent out
before permission was obtained from the Director of
the Canadian Medical Service, to send out a Canadian
laboratory. For some unexplained reason the Cana-
dian Government refused the necessary funds for the
chassis so that we were compelled to pack our equip-
ment in twenty-four numbered cases, all of which could
be carried on a three-ton motor lorry. I had discovered
that the officers in charge of these laboratories at the
front had already found them too small to work in
comfortably, and had removed and placed the equip-
ment in some convenient house, using the lorry merely
to carry their equipment. We were able to carry twice
as complete an equipment, costing altogether less than
$2,000 in a borrowed lorry, and saved the cost of $10,-
000 for the motor chassis.
When the first Canadian Division went to France,
No. 1 Canadian General Hospital had been left be-
hind on Salisbury Plain, to take care of the sick. It
had been decided that I was to go to France in com-
mand of the Canadian Mobile Laboratory, and that I
should take with me two officers and several men from
63
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
the staff of that hospital. The Lozier car which had
been given me by the Canadian Government was also to
go as part of the equipment. After working in the office
of the Director of Medical Services for a couple of
weeks straightening out the records in regard to ty-
phoid inoculation, and cerebro-spinal meningitis, and in
purchasing the necessary equipment, I received word
that the laboratory was to go to the front immediately.
The Surgeon-General accordingly made all the neces-
sary arrangements, and left for France, while I went
down to Bulford to wait for the expected telegram
which was to speed us on our way.
We waited over three weeks for the message, grow-
ing more and more desperate every day. Finally we
went up to London and found that somebody had made
a mistake and that we were supposed to be in France
long ago. We were instructed to leave on the second
day following.
The men were all greatly excited at the good news.
We had a farewell dinner that night at the mess, which
assumed a somewhat convivial character, and when I
left to drive two visitors into Salisbury, the hospital
dentist was making a rambling, tearful plea to a few
hilarious auditors, on behalf of Ireland, while the great
majority were paying no more attention to him than if
he did not exist.
Next morning with our equipment, men and car,
we set out for Southampton, amid the envious fare-
wells of our brother officers, whose call had not yet
come. Everything was loaded on board the transport
64
MAJOR-GENERAL M. S. MERCER, C.B.
Former Officer Commanding- Third Canadian Division.
Killed in action, June, 1916.
THE LOST CANADIAN LABORATORY
at noon, and late in the afternoon we left for Havre,
accompanied by two torpedo boat destroyers.
After some delay at the Havre docks for petrol, we
got away and reported our arrival at one of the rest
camps on the outskirts of the city. Our elation at hav-
ing finally arrived in France was marred only by the
news that we would probably be detained at the base
for two or three days. Having been informed that the
Hotel Tortoni was the liveliest place in town to stay,
and not to go there on any account, we went and con-
cluded that we had been the victims of a practical joke,
for we had not seen anything so dull in all our lives;
it was as dull and as good as a hotel at Chautauqua.
There was more "life" to be seen in an English hotel in
a minute than one could see in the Hotel Tortoni in a
month.
As there were no theatres or concerts to go to and
nothing else to do, we went to bed in the chilliest bed-
rooms that I had ever been in up to that time. I soon
learned that French hotel bedrooms in winter have the
same cold, clammy feeling as the interior of refrigera-
tor cars in summer. This accounts, perhaps, for the
French being a hot-blooded people.
Of all the cities of the world that it has been my
privilege to visit, the city of Havre is the dirtiest, the
ugliest, and the least interesting. We could find no
public buildings with even the slightest pretence to
beauty, and the rest of the city was as dull and com-
mercial as it is possible for a seaport town to be; one
can say little more than that, in consideration of any city.
With the exception of the docks and the casino there is
65
6
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
nothing of interest, and even the casino, like all the
casinos in France, had been converted into a hospital.
After two days of killing time, our orders came
through to leave for the front, two of us to go by motor
and the rest by train. Our experience with the British
officer at the base had certainly been pleasant and
proved to be a happy augury of our future relationships
with them. The British officer in France is quite a
different man from the same officer in England, and
does not impress you with the fact that the war is being
carried on by his individual efforts.
At the base we learned for the first time that we had
been a great source of anxiety to some of the officials of
the British army three weeks before, when the war office
had announced our departure from England. When
we had failed to report our arrival at Havre the author-
ities had assumed that we, being Canadians and more
or less independent, had gone off on a little trip of our
own into the interior of France. In their efforts to
locate us they had telegraphed far and wide; conse-
quently when we did arrive everybody knew of us as
"The Lost Canadian Laboratory" and seemed to be
quite pleased that we had been found. When anything
goes astray in the army it causes a tremendous amount of
consternation and trouble until it is located; the easiest
thing to lose is a soldier in hospital but as he can talk
this matter usually rights itself sooner or later.
The morning on which we set out on our first day's
"march" to the front was misty and raw, and motoring
was very cold. Even this early in the season — mid
March, 1915 — the fields were being ploughed, but the
66
THE LOST CANADIAN LABORATORY
ploughing and harrowing was being done by women,
old men and boys. Hardly one able-bodied man was to
be seen, the contrast with England in this respect at
that time being very marked. A crowd of schoolboys
pleading for souvenirs were made to earn them and
amuse us by running races while we had a tire replaced.
The banks on the roadside were yellow with the
first primroses, and patches of golden daffodils could be
seen in the woods, though spring seemed to be far
enough away that chilly day. It was characteristic of
one's experience in France that, as we sat down to din-
ner that evening in an Abbeville hotel I had beside me
an officer in the British army who had been in Canada
for a number of years and who had, during that time,
been a frequent caller at my home in Toronto. The
spontaneous manner in which the two of us rose and
rushed at each other with outstretched arms would
have done credit to native born Frenchmen.
As we approached the front, the long straight
French roads gave way to winding narrow ways, fre-
quently paved with cobble stones called pave. The
country became flat, and the roadside ditches were rilled
to the brim with water. That we were within the
sphere, of military operations became more and more
evident. Motor cars carrying officers passed frequent-
ly; motor transports carrying food and fodder rumbled
along the roads or were parked in the outskirts of
villages or in village squares; motor ambulance con-
voys were drawn up in front of hospitals, and, in general,
we felt that we were nearing the real seat of operations,
the front line.
67
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
It was a drive of a hundred miles to the little town
which was to be our headquarters for nine long months,
and I remember the thrill that I had when we first
saw the effects of shell fire — a hole about two feet in
diameter in the bricks above the door of the Hotel de
Ville. As we later discovered, the village authorities
had decided not to repair that hole but to leave it as a
memorial of the day when the Germans had been driven
from the town and had fired some shells back into it,
killing a dozen of the inhabitants.
After reporting to the corps headquarters in town,
we were instructed to attach ourselves to No. 7 Clearing
Hospital, where we were made most welcome by the
commanding officer and his staff. Colonel Wear found
billets for us in the town, and a splendid room for a
laboratory in the Hotel De Ville. This room, 22 x 36
feet, had been the banquet hall and band room, and was
well lighted by windows and gas. When equipped as
a laboratory it presented a most imposing appearance,
and from it we had a fine view of the village square,
commonly called the Grande Place. As everything
going through the town had to pass by our windows in
order to cross the bridges over the canals, we could view
a continuous panorama of never-failing interest when-
ever we had the leisure to look down upon it.
Captain Rahkin found his billet at the top of a
house on the opposite side of the square from the la-
boratory; Captain Ellis found his in a house in the
corner of the square, and mine proved to be a little room
over a grocery shop on another corner of the square.
My room was reached by passing through the shop, up
68
THE LOST CANADIAN LABORATORY
a very steep staircase, and through a storeroom filled
with boxes of soap, biscuits, bundles of brooms, and
other staples. The room itself was clean but without
heat, and I usually fell asleep after a couple of hours of
shivering in the depths of a damp, cold, feather mat-
tress. Eleven crucifixes and two glass cases of artificial
flowers, together with portraits of the pope and local
cure, constituted the decorations of the room, and was
typical of the region, for this part of France was thor-
oughly Catholic.
Our equipment did not arrive for three days, so
that we had some opportunity to look around and get
our bearings in the area in which we were to work.
The Director of Medical Services of the army had
called just after we arrived, and had given us instruc-
tions. Like all the British officers we met in the
field, he treated us with the greatest kindness and con-
sideration. Faultless in dress, precise in manner, with
monocle and carefully trimmed hair and moustache, he
gave one the impression of just having stepped from his
dressing room after a bath. And yet his knowledge of
the military game as it applied to the medical service
was just as accurate, precise and complete as his external
appearance indicated. He was a tremendous worker
and efficient to the last degree, as his record since has
demonstrated.
69
CHAPTER VI.
THE DAYS BEFORE YPRES.
THE following day we drove over to Estaires, five
miles away, to see the first Canadian division com-
ing back into rest after a month in the trenches. As
we passed the infantry on the road it was pleasant to
see broad smiles spreading over the faces of the men
who recognized us as having been with them at Val-
cartier and Salisbury Plain. Fit and rugged they
looked as they swung along with the confident air which
newly arrived troops often seem to possess. Their offi-
cers were pleased with them, and were satisfied that the
division needed only an opportunity to make good. The
division had been on the left at the battle or Neuve
Chappelle, and had had no real fighting as yet; but it
had received an excellent month's training in trench
warfare, and was now well broken into the new game.
The division remained for a week in that neighbor-
hood resting, and we had several opportunities of visit-
ing our friends. On Sunday three of us called on my
old friend General Mercer of the first brigade, and had
tea with him and Majors Van Straubenzie and Hayter
of his staff. General Mercer expressed himself as being
delighted with the men and as having the highest con-
fidence in them.
We also had dinner with Colonel (now General)
Rennie and our old friends of the third (Toronto)
battalion who were located in a little peasant cottage
70
THE DAYS BEFORE YPRES
in Neuf Berquin. In a room adjoining Captain Hay-
wood, the medical officer of the battalion, lay on a pile
of straw with symptoms of appendicitis. He was not
too sick to give some extremely graphic descriptions
of his first experiences in the trenches, while we all
sat around and smoked. The room was lighted by a
single stable lantern which also smoked and we sat on
boxes; I have seldom passed a more pleasant evening in
my life than that spent in the little peasant cottage with
my soldier friends, Captains George Ryerson, Muntz,
Wickens, Major Allan (all since dead), Major Kirk-
patrick (now a prisoner in Germany), Captains Hut-
chison, Bart Rogers, George, Lyne-Evans, Robertson,
(of the first battalion) and others. Some of these chaps
I knew well in Canada and we talked of home and the
old times, all the while realizing that some of us would
never again get back. The feeling was now fast sett-
ling down upon us that we were actually at war, and that
soon some of the men we had grown to admire and love
would have to pay the price.
During the evening two stocky little French girls
came in and sang "Eet's a longa, longa wye to Teeper-
aree" in English for the "seek Capitan."
The Canadian division was in rest during those
early April days when the cold, long-drawn out spring
became almost imperceptibly warmer and the buds were
beginning to swell on the trees and bushes.
On the first day of April, Bismarck's birthplace, we
were expecting something unusual along the front and
were not disappointed. While driving up to the Clear-
ing Station to breakfast, we noticed a couple of Hun
71
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
aeroplanes being shelled by our "Archibalds." When
we returned to the town half an hour later we found
that the place had been bombed.
One bomb had gone right through Rankin's billet,
exploded in the workshop on the ground floor and
blown out all the windows; another had fallen in the
square about twenty yards in front of my billet and had
failed to explode, while six others had fallen in different
parts of the town, half of which were "duds." Nobody
was hurt and no other damage was done.
Bittleson, Captain Rankin's batman, who hap-
pened to be looking out of the top window at the time,
swore that the bomb which went through the roof be-
side him had grazed his forehead.
The bomb which had failed to explode in the
square was taken possession of by our staff sergeant and
placed on my laboratory table as a souvenir. A staff
officer from heaquarters, fortunately, came along be-
fore we returned and bore it off to his chief after pro-
mising to return it. Needless to relate it never came
back, much to my relief and to the disgust of the staff
sergeant who on several occasions referred to the ini-
quity of this high handed action.
On Easter Sunday we were invited to some sports
by the divisional cavalry. As we drove up to the or-
chard specified in the invitation a crowd of typical big
western cowboys with their broad brimmed Stetson
hats came streaming up the road from a nearby farm
where they had been foregathering.
A clear stretch of turf was selected, a ring formed
by the crowd and the first event was announced — a cock
72
THE DAYS BEFORE YPRES
fight between Von Kluck and J off re. Cock fighting is
the native sport of the countryside in that region where
nearly every farmer keeps a couple of game cocks and
fights them on Sunday afternoons, incidentally betting
on the results.
After everybody had been warned not to move, the
two birds were placed gently on the ground on opposite
sides of the circle. Carelessly, and without apparently
having noticed one another, the roosters walked about
picking at the grass but gradually getting nearer to one
another. When they got within a yard of each other
they became more wary, though still feigning careless-
ness, until one seeing an opportunity, sprang into the
air and struck at the head of the other with the curved
wire nails attached to his legs in place of spurs. The
other dodged and counter attacked and the action be-
came general.
Using beak, wings and spurs they jumped, flew and
struck at one another as opportunity afforded, until
Joffre got a strangle hold on Von Kluck and buried his
spurs again and again into the prostrate body until he
finally struck a vital spot and the combat was over.
Then, stretching himself, the victor flapped his wings
once or twice as if to say "bring on the next" and went
on picking at the grass as before.
It was the first time that I had ever seen a cock
fight and I hope it will be the last. The concentration
on the faces of those men as they watched the cruel
"sport" and the play of expression passing over them
was intensely interesting to me; you could almost tell
what some of them were saying within their minds and
73
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
it was pleasant to know that to the great majority of
them the game was as repulsive as it was to us. It was
obviously unsuited to the taste of our new country and
men who might themselves be dead in the course of
a week or two.
One other cock fight was put on and then we turned
to a game much more suited to our men — a wrestling
bout on horseback. Four men on each side mounted
on horses, without saddles or bridles, were drawn up
at opposite sides of the field. The men were dressed in
trousers and shirts only; the horses were guided solely
by a halter.
At a given signal the two parties approached one
another at a trot, each man selecting as his antagonist
the one opposite him. In the first crash a couple were
dismounted almost instantly, and the battle resolved
itself into several separate encounters.
The horses seemed to enter into the spirit of the
thing and backed up, wheeled, side-stepped and did
their best to help their owners win.
Meanwhile the riders, grasping one another by
body, arm or leg, did their utmost to tear one another off
their horses. When it became three against two, the two
would tackle one opponent and it was the task of the
single man to try to keep the two others on the same side
so that they could not grasp him on both sides at once.
It was exciting enough to see one man being pulled by
one arm from one side, while another man was trying
to throw his opposite leg over the horse. Even when
they succeeded in accomplishing this he clung to the
horse's neck and it was only with the greatest difficulty
74
THE DAYS BEFORE YPRES
that his feet were made to touch the ground and he
was thereby put out of the game.
One or two obstreperous animals who objected to
the game ran away with their riders and tried to brush
them off on the apple trees. The contestants were all as
hard as nails and could stand any amount of rough
usage such as they received in this gladiator-like contest.
After the games were over we adjourned to the
Colonel's billet for afternoon tea and music. The
Colonel was exceedingly fond of his gramophone, and,
being troubled somewhat with insomnia, would some-
times rise in the middle of the night and put on a few
of his favorite records, much to the annoyance of the
rest of the staff billeted in the same house. Knowing
this, one did not think it so strange as it might other-
wise have seemed, that, during the course of a move of
the division, the gramophone fell from a wagon and
was run over by six other wagons. What did seem
mysterious was the fact that none of the drivers had seen
the gramophone in the road until it had been crushed as
flat as a board.
When I visited the divisional cavalry a few months
later the Colonel was still carrying forty dollars' worth
of records with him but had not yet ordered a new
gramophone.
Gradually the Canadian division moved on. One
night we found them in the neighborhood of Winni-
zeele and Oudezeele, hamlets near the Belgian border.
In searching for a battalion headquarters we asked one
soldier sitting in front of a barn what village this was
and received the not uncommon answer "I don't know."
75
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
It was astonishing how frequently that answer was
given. Apparently some men were quite content to be
moved about like pawns in a game of chess without
question as long as they were fed and clothed; they
seemingly had adopted the attitude of the Mohamme-
dan, "It is the will of Allah."
We had dinner with Colonel Rennie and his staff
that night, and a pleasant dinner it was. I remember
yet how envious we were of Major Kirkpatrick who
took us up to his room and there opened up a box just
received from his wife in England — a box containing
cigarettes, chocolates, taffy, gum, magazines and other
things so greatly appreciated by the soldier in the field,
and so liberally shared by them with less fortunate ones.
Some men were very lucky in having wives who seemed
to spend a great deal of thought — and money — in things
that would be appreciated by their husbands in France.
The Major was taken a prisoner a fortnight later and I
sincerely hope that he was as lucky in having his boxes
come through to him in Germany.
After dinner we accompanied some of the younger
officers to a mysterious place called uThe Club" — an
Estaminet in the village, operated by a French woman
and recently "out of bounds" for several days because
of failure to observe the early closing law.
The scene in that little French uPub" that evening
might have been from a comedy written of the period
of one hundred years ago. In the common room were
a number of officers playing cards at little tables. The
air was blue with smoke and numerous bottles of wine
stood on the tables.
76
THE DAYS BEFORE YPRES
A young French woman sat over in a corner chat-
ting confidentially in French to a Canadian officer who
thought he was replying in the same language. Neither
understood a word that the other said, though both were
obviously delighted at their success in making them-
selves understood, so what was the difference?
The scene, which grew more and more interesting
as the evening advanced, was brought to a sudden con-
clusion by the entrance of a Lieutenant, who announced
that nine o'clock had struck; in a moment the room was
emptied, lights were out and we were all wending our
ways homeward.
The first impressions of a soldier at the front are
invariably the most vivid. A week after we had settled
down to routine work we had occasion to visit one of the
advanced dressing stations in our area. Leaving our
little town by motor we crossed the canal by the lift-
bridge after waiting to allow three Dutch barges to
pass through. These lift bridges are hinged about one
third of the way from one end and are raised by means
of stout cables hitched to the other end and passing
back to towers. They are so balanced that little effort is
required to raise or lower them.
Turning to the left we struck into a pave road
which led for some distance along the canal bank. Pave
is not a bad road when kept in good repair as this one
was, and when you get used to the vibration of the car
bouncing from one cobble stone to another; when, how-
ever, it is not kept in repair, depressions form which
rapidly increase as cart and motor wheels fall into them
and hammer them deeper and deeper.
77
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
A little grey tug boat, painted the regulation battle-
ship grey, slipped quietly along through the canal tow-
ing several barges loaded with road metal and lumber.
A buzz like a huge bee approaching us across the
fields attracted our attention, and we looked up to see
an aeroplane, like a gigantic dragon fly bearing directly
down upon us. A hundred yards away it left the
ground and passed over our heads climbing steadily in
a great spiral into the sky. Another aeroplane, and
another followed till there were five circling above us,
getting smaller and smaller as they soared into the
heaven, looking like herons in flight among the clouds.
They then made off towards different parts of the Ger-
man lines to their daily task of reconnaissance.
The women, old men and children, were busy on
the farms ploughing, harrowing and putting in the seed.
Though the men were away there was no dearth of
labour on the farms and everything was going on as it
should. The silly-looking, heavily-built, three- wheeled
carts, empty or loaded with manure, bumped along be-
hind the broad-backed Flemish horses, guided solely
by a frail looking piece of string. The driver, seated
crosswise on a projecting tongue of wood, guides the
horse by mysterious signals conveyed through jerks of
the piece of string, and steers the cart by leaning over
and shoving the small front steering wheel to the right
or left by hand. The Flemish horses are very placid
and are never startled by motors, gun fire, or anything
else.
Away to the right we could see the spires of a
church in a little village nestling among the trees. Our
78
THE DAYS BEFORE YPRES
road took its tortuous course through fields as flat as a
board. Tall trees flanked the roadside which was
separated from the fields by ditches three or four feet
wide, serving to drain both road and fields and ultimate-
ly emptying into some canal or creek. In this particu-
lar part of Flanders hedges were not in universal use
for fences. In one place we execrated the Germans for
having cut down dozens of the roadside trees, only to
discover later that the British themselves had cut them
down in order to clear the course for aeroplanes ascend-
ing and descending to the aerodrome close by.
We overhauled a trotting dog team dragging a
heavy little milk cart and driven by a boy who ran
alongside. At the sound of the motor horn the dogs
turned sharply to the right without waiting for orders
from the boy, ran over his foot, and nearly upset the
cart. One judged that they had had some previous and
possibly not pleasant experiences with motor cars, and
were taking no chances. What the boy said to them
was shameful, judged even by our limited knowledge
of French and the short time we were within hearing
of him.
Coming into the little town of La Gorgue we could
see to our right a chateau in quite pretentious gardens —
a chateau in which the German Crown Prince is said
to have been staying when a British shell crashed
through the roof and made him move on the double
quick. This town like our own was intersected by a
canal which was used both as a sewer and source of
water supply for washing purposes. The streets in this
town are dirty and ill kept; the stores uninteresting, and
79
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
the houses squalid; it ran into the next town of Estaires
by the continuation of the main street.
Canadian soldiers were everywhere in evidence,
wandering along the roads in the manner so character-
istic of them. Canadians have never been over fond of
saluting officers, and have never quite accepted the state-
ment that it is the uniform of the representative of the
King they are called upon to salute — not the man.
The first story I heard was about a chauffeur I
had had in Valcartier. He had been standing at the
doorway of a store trying to talk to a French girl when
a couple of British officers passed. The man did not
see them till they were just going by and drew him-
self up to a sort of a half attention. The officers passed,
halted, and came back.
"Why didn't you salute?" queried one officer.
"I didn't see you," replied the man.
"Oh, yes, you did; you came to a kind of sloppy
attention as we passed," said the officer.
"Yes," said the man. "I did as you were almost
past; but anyway we don't salute much in our army."
"What?" said the officer, "are you a Canadian?"
"Yes, sir," said the chauffeur proudly, and the Bri-
tish officers went on laughing heartily.
The officers we came to see were out and we seized
the opportunity to run over for a look at the shell-shat-
tered town of Larentie — the first battered town we had
seen. To us, at that time, it was an awe-inspiring spec-
tacle, though nowadays it would be considered a com-
paratively undamaged town.
The houses on the outskirts were quite intact, but
80
THE DAYS BEFORE YPRES
as we approached the centre of the town, shattered
windows, pitted walls, and scarred woodwork indicated
that the town had been heavily shelled. Near the
church the buildings were wrecked ; roofs were lifted
off, windows blown out, and walls were frequently half
down or had great holes in them, while the block right
around the church was a heap of rubbish.
The church itself had been hit scores of times, and
the walls though still standing were perforated like a
sieve. The stones in the foundation of the church were
fractured by the force of the exploding shells into tiny
fragments, still pressed together with the weight of the
material above them. So crushed were they that if re-
moved, a tap with a hammer would make them fall
into thousands of splinters.
The houses round about the church had been
completely razed to the ground. Those adjacent
were partly unroofed, with perhaps a wall blown
out showing an upstairs with a stairway swinging
from the floor, beams from the roof fallen over the
iron bedstead, sheets of wall paper dangling from
the walls, and every other imaginable combination of
wreckage. And yet a few doors away down the street
where the houses had not been very badly damaged
they were occupied by civilians who tried to eke out an
existence by selling candy and foodstuffs.
It is a never-failing source of wonder to see people
in such places which were being shelled daily, hanging
on desperately to the old homes, not knowing when a
shell might come through the roof and kill them all.
That was brought home to me later on when, as I
81
7
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
passed through a village one afternoon, I saw three wo-
men being dug out of the cellar of a house in which a
shell had exploded a minute before. On another occa-
sion in a village close by a mother with her babe at her
breast, three children of various ages, the husband and
the grandmother, were all killed in one room by a Ger-
man shell, the walls, ceiling and floor being splattered
with blood and brains. And so it goes on day after day
among the civilians in the shelled area in France. Most
of them escape but many of them pay the price.
82
CHAPTER VII.
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES.
IT was a glorious spring day on Saturday, April
17th, 1915, when I motored to Ypres. The first Cana-
dian Contingent had gone into the salient several days
before, and had now settled down to business in the
trenches. Our laboratory had been given permission
to keep a check on the purity of the water supply of
the Canadians; hence this trip from our laboratory,
located twenty miles away in another part of the line.
The cobble stone or pave road between Poperinge
and Ypres was like a moving picture to our, as yet, un-
satiated eyes. Here a small party of soldiers marched
along quickly; there three blue-coated French officers,
with smartly-trimmed moustaches, cantered by on horse-
back; a pair of goggled-despatch riders on throbbing
motor cycles dashed along at terrific speed, leaving long
trails of dust behind them; a string of transport waggons
with hay and other fodder, crept along leisurely; a motor
ambulance convoy sped past with back curtains up,
showing the boots of the recumbent wounded, or the
peering faces of the sitting cases with heads and arms
bound in white linen; some old women arrayed in their
best dresses, and with baskets on arms, were coming
from market gossiping volubly; boys and girls garbed
in the universal one-piece black overdress of the coun-
try, played games on the roadside ; an armoured-motor
machine gun halted beside the children to make some
83
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
adjustment; great three-ton lorries lumbered along;
officers in touring cars, sometimes with red and gold
staff hats, flew by, taking salutes with easy nonchalance,
while we, with ears and eyes wide open, bowled along
towards the famous city of Ypres.
It was war, — apparently an easy going, leisurely
sort of game. Everybody seemed to be going about as
if they had been at this sort of thing all their lives; as
if, in fact, they couldn't do anything else.
Every vehicle and every person that went into the
salient had to travel on that broad highway, flanked
with tall trees, and paved with cobble stone. Wire en-
tanglements and trenches traversed the roads at inter-
vals, and shell holes filled with water in the adjacent
fields showed the road to be within range of the German
guns.
As we approached Ypres we could see that, like
all the towns of northern France and Belgium, it was
sharply separated from the adjacent fields; there were
no extensive suburbs such as are found around the
modern British or American city causing them to merge
gradually into the surrounding country. When we
passed the first houses we were practically in a solid
compact town.
According to the custom in Flanders, the houses
and stores of Ypres were built close together, right on
the sidewalk, without gardens or spaces between them.
Many were white, and the effect of the white stucco and
red brick gave the city a clean and sanitary appearance.
It was a town with a population of less than 20,000, a
mere reminiscence of that ancient city of Ypres of the
.84
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
12th century which had had a population of 200,000
inhabitants and which had been the most powerful city
in Flanders and one of the richest in the world, — a city
larger and more powerful than London. Ypres was
famous for its cloth in the 13th century, when it had
4,000 looms in use. Through wars and religious per-
secutions the population of Ypres had dwindled at one
time to 5,000 people. Her fortifications had long ago
been dismantled, and with the exception of a few mag-
nificent buildings, her ancient glory had departed.
As our car slowly passed through the town evi-
dences of shell fire were abundantly apparent. Here
was a house with its roof blown off; another with the
windows blown out, the woodwork splintered and the
walls pitted with shrapnel; while another had been
completely gutted. We turned to the right and came
upon the famous church of St. Martin's. Great piles
of stone and debris lay in front of it, the roof was gone
and the windows had disappeared, but the tower was
still intact; the houses in the neighborhood had been
blown to atoms.
Our hearts beat faster when we came upon the
building adjacent to it, facing the Grande Place, — the
glorious cloth hall of Ypres, beautiful even in its ruin.
Few such wonderfully majestic specimens of architec-
ture as this ancient monument of the weavers of Ypres
have come down to us through the ages. On the great
square in the heart of the city it stood, nearly 500 feet
long and half as wide. The walls were yet fairly intact,
also the main square tower in the centre and the grace-
ful pointed turrets at each corner. Most of the roof was
85
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
gone, but enough remained to show that it had been
very high-pitched, and that the proportions of the
building must have been perfect. The interior was a
mass of rubble; here and there direct hits had blown
holes in the wonderfully carved walls, and some of the
statues of the famous men of the ancient city had been
tumbled from their niches between the third tier of
windows. None of the woodwork of the famous paint-
ed panels of the interior remained; it had all been
destroyed by fire from the incendiary shells of the
apostles of culture.
I stood and gazed, quite carried away by the beauty
of even the fragments of the magnificent bit of Gothic
architecture, and with indignation at its destruction.
The warm spring sun of midday played about its col-
umns, making heavy shadows under the windows and
ruined arches; soldiers crossed the square and stood
about as if they were a thousand miles from the Ger-
man lines. Several officers could be seen wandering
about studying the ruins; two of them I knew and they
came over to shake hands. I asked where I could get
some dinner, and was directed to the only decent
restaurant left in the town, located just beyond the
Cloth Hall on the square.
As we stopped at the door of the estaminet Lt.-
Col. (Canon) Frederick Scott, one of our Canadian
poets, came by and stopped for a chat. I had not seen
him since the memorable days of Salisbury Plain, and
he was full of his experiences as a regimental chaplain.
He drew from his pocket the manuscript of a newly-
86
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
written poem and, oblivious of his surroundings, stood
by the car and recited it to me.
The little restaurant was well filled with officers
even at this late lunching hour of two o'clock. It had
been a millinery store, but latterly there had been little
sale for millinery and there had been a great demand
for food; the three pretty Flemish sisters who owned
the shop had therefore accommodated themselves to the
situation and now served most excellent food daintily
on clean tables, though not with great despatch. At
any rate, my omelette, cheese, toast and coffee tasted
very good to me that day, while I chatted to two en-
gineers who had countermined and blown up a German
mine at St. Eloi a few days before.
After lunch we hunted out No. 3 Field Ambu-
lance, whose personnel came largely from Toronto.
Colonel McPherson of Toronto, the officer com-
manding, seemed glad to see me, as he always did, and
showed me over the ambulance and billets where the
officers were quartered. I took water samples for ex-
amination of their drinking water supply, which was
not above suspicion. The garden at the rear of their
temporary home was vibrant with sunshine; the pears,
trained against the walls in the rectangular manner so
much in vogue in France, and the peach trees, were al-
ready bursting into clusters of pink and white blossoms.
I picked some beautiful blue pansies to press in my
pocket book and send home as souvenirs of my first visit
to Ypres.
Upon leaving the ambulance we passed over the
river by the bridge, where soldiers were filling water
87
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
carts by means of hand pumps; passed the ancient
ramparts on the river's edge and through the hamlet
of St. Jean to Wieltze, where the advanced dressing
station of the ambulance was located. Here I saw
my friend Captain Brown and collected water samples
for examination. Returning to Ypres we went out to
Brielen to see the A.D.M.S. of the Canadian Division
and there found some letters from home waiting me.
While in the office a sudden commotion among a
group of soldiers outside and the raising of glasses sky-
ward drew us forth to watch an aerial battle in progress.
With the aid of borrowed glasses I could see six ma-
chines in the sky manoeuvring for position. Two in
particular seemed to be closely engaged when the Ger-
man suddenly turned tail and fled. A white puff of
smoke beside him indicated that the Archibalds had
been watching the combat closely. A second, third
and fourth followed in rapid succession until suddenly
at the fifteenth burst the Taube began to drop and
flutter down, like a leaf falling from a forest tree on a
quiet October day. Five minutes later, far out in the
salient, we saw a second driven down in a straight nose
dive, making the third for that day in the vicinity of
Ypres. One might watch for months, as I afterwards
did, without seeing another aeroplane brought down.
When we were on our way back from Ypres on our
return, a horse ridden by an officer suddenly curvetted
across the road in front of us. Rad pulled up the car
to a full stop, and the officer pulled in his horse at the
same time. The horse reared, his front feet caught in
the fender, he pawed the air wildly for a moment and,
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
losing his balance, he fell over backward rolling on the
officer. Soldiers quickly caught the horse and pulled
him to one side, and greatly to our relief the officer was
able to get up and walk. It was characteristic of the
British officer that he had no feeling towards us on
account of his accident; on the contrary, bruised and
aching as he must have been though he would not ad-
mit it, he came over to the car and apologized for hav-
ing caused us inconvenience. It is the British way of
doing things.
As we traversed Ypres on our homeward route, a
little girl held up bouquets of spring flowers and we
stopped while I bought a large bunch of daffodils for
the equivalent of two pennies. Crossing the railway
tracks by the shell-shattered station we struck into the
Dickiebush — Bailleul Road, and drove slowly home-
ward over the rough pave.
Near Dickiebush the fields were pitted with
numerous shell holes, and the rails of a light railway
at one place pointed heavenward where a shell had
exploded between them.
A pup, evidently unused to motor traffic on this bad
bit of road, took a chance and tried to dash across in
front of the car but miscalculated his distance and was
bowled into the ditch.
It was curious to see one field ploughed with
shells and full of holes, and the next field with pro-
minently placed new signs bearing the inscription,
"It is forbidden to walk over the growing grain."
As we passed through the rolling land of Belgium
under the brow of "The Scherpenberg," with Mount
89
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
Kemmel over to the right honeycombed with dugouts,
it was difficult to believe that, locked in a death grapple,
not three miles away, were thousands of soldiers living
underground like moles, and that at any moment the
air might be filled with shells carrying death and de-
struction.
At the end of a peaceful day we reached our little
French home town, glad to have seen our friends in
their new area by the famous old city of the Flemish
weavers.
Springtime had come in truth; the hedges of
Northern France were beginning to bloom white, and
the wild flowers were quite thick in the forest of Nieppe
near Merville. It was the time in Canada when the
spring feeling suddenly got into the blood, when one
threw work to the winds and took to the woods in search
of the first violets.
On the twenty-second day of April the very
essence of spring was in the air; I felt as if I had to
go out into the open and watch the birds and bees, loll
in the sun, and do nothing. We struggled along until
noon with our routine work, and having completed it
Captain Rankin and I left for Ypres. A soldier had
been transferred to us, and as we did not need him we
decided to register a formal protest and see if he could
not be kept with his present unit. Our road lay through
Dickiebush and we made good .time, again reaching
Ypres about two o'clock.
It was quite evident to me as I retraversed the
streets of Ypres that it had been heavily shelled since
I had been there a few days before. Many more houses
90
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
had been smashed, and unmended shell holes were seen
in the roads. As we crossed the Grande Place there was
scarcely a soldier visible. The Cloth Hall, which the
Captain had not seen before, showed further evidences
of shell fire. After viewing the ruins we drove to the
little restaurant kept by the pretty milliners, only to
find that the place had completely disappeared — liter-
ally blown to atoms. Later on we found that a fifteen-
inch shell had landed in the building next door and
both houses had simultaneously vanished. A well
known officer, Captain Trumbull Warren of the 48th
Highlanders, Toronto, coming out of a store on the
opposite side of the square had been killed by a flying
fragment of the same shell.
We wondered whether the milliners had escaped,
and somewhat depressed, drove along in search of an-
other retaurant. A sign "Chocolat" on a door in a
side street made us inquire, and, curiously enough, we
found this also to be a little restaurant kept by two
other milliners. They informed us that the first three
milliners had escaped when the bombardment began,
and before their restaurant had been blown up. One's
interest in a place or in a battle is often in direct propor-
tion to the number of one's friends or acquaintances
there.
After lunch we drove to Brielen, but found that
the A.D.M.S., whom we were in search of, and his dep-
uty were both out. We were shown maps of the salient,
and had the area pointed out to us where the French
joined up with the second and third brigades of Cana-
dians, and where the British troops joined up with the
91
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
Canadians. When about to leave, a friend, Major Mac-
laren of the 10th Infantry battalion, riding a mettle-
some horse, rode up and I got out of the car and held
the bridle while we had a long talk about the experi-
ences of the Canadians since we had left Salisbury
Plain.
We then drove back to the Ypres water pool,
which was the largest supply of drinking water in the
area. There were at least thirty-five water carts in line
waiting their turn to fill up at this presumably good
supply. We were told that it was safe because twice a
week a couple of pounds of chloride of lime were
chucked into the middle of the pool. We took samples
of the water and passed on to Wieltze, intending to
walk into the salient to see what "No man's Land" was
like. Men had told us that, unlike the rest of the front
near the trenches, there were no growing crops, and no
birds sang in that desolate, dreary, shell-shattered area,
and we wanted to see it for ourselves.
We were surprised and delighted to find Captain
Scrimger, whom we had left convalescing at Bulford,
England, in charge of the Advanced Dressing Station.
He had just arrived that afternoon, and was in hopes
of getting his old battalion again, explaining that on
account of his illness in England he had been tempor-
arily replaced as regimental medical officer by Captain
Boyd. We talked with him in the little estaminet in
which the dressing station was located, while the old
woman who kept the place and two peasants chatted
quietly together in a corner and drank beer. I wonder-
ed at the time whether they were spies. Captain
92
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
Scrimger walked with us up to the edge of the village
and then returned to his charge.
At the outskirts of the village we noticed a peasant
planting seeds in the little garden in front of his house.
The earth had all been dug and raked smooth by a
boy and a couple of children. To our "Bon jour" he
replied, and added "II fait bon temps n'est ce pas?"
looking up at the sun with evident satisfaction.
No motor transport was allowed to pass Wieltze
because the road beyond was exceedingly rough, and it
would only have been inviting disaster from break-
downs and German shells to have proceeded farther.
As we tramped along towards St. Julien our atten-
tion was attracted to a greenish yellow smoke ascend-
ing from the part of the line occupied by the French.
We wondered what the smoke was coming from. Half
a mile up the road we » seated ourselves on a disused
trench and lit cigarettes, while I began to read a home
letter which I had found at Brielen.
An aeroplane flying low overhead dropped some
fire-balls. Immediately a violent artillery cannonade
began. Looking towards the French line we saw this
yellowish green cloud rising on a front of at least three
miles and drifting at a height of perhaps a hundred
feet towards us.
"That must be the poison gas that we have heard
vague rumours about," I remarked to the Captain. The
gas rose in great clouds as if it had been poured from
nozzles, expanding as it ascended ; here and there brown
clouds seemed to be mixed with the general yellowish
93
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
green ones. "It looks like chlorine," I said, "and I bet
it is." The Captain agreed that it probably was.
The cannonade increased in intensity. About five
minutes after it began a hoarse whistle, increasing to a
roar like that of a railroad train, passed overhead. "For
Ypres," we ejaculated, and looking back we saw a cloud
as big as a church rise up from that ill-fated city, fol-
lowed by the sound of the explosion of a fifteen-inch
shell. Thereafter these great shells succeeded one an-
other at regular intervals, each one followed by the
great black cloud in Ypres.
The bombardment grew in intensity. Over in a
field not two hundred yards away numerous coal boxes
exploded, throwing up columns of mud and water like
so many geysers. General Alderson and General Bur-
stall of the Canadian Division came hurrying up the
road and paused for a moment to shake hands, and to re-
mark that the Germans appeared to be making a heavy
attack upon the French. We wondered whether they
would get back to their headquarters or not
Shells of various calibres, whistling and screaming,
flew over our heads from German batteries as well as
from our own batteries replying to them. The air
seemed to be full of shells flying in all directions. The
gas cloud gradually grew less dense, but the bombard-
ment redoubled in violence as battery after battery
joined in the angry chorus.
Aross the fields we could see guns drawn by gallop-
ing horses taking up new positions. One such gun had
taken a position not three hundred yards away from us
when a German shell lit apparently not twenty feet
94
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
away from it; that gun was moved with despatch into
another position.
Occasionally we imagined that we could hear
heavy rifle and machine gun fire, but the din was too
great to distinguish much detail. The common expres-
sion used on the front, "Hell let loose," was the only
term at all descriptive of the scene.
Streaking across the fields towards us came a dog.
On closer view he appeared to be a nondescript sort of
dog of no particular family or breeding. But he was
bent on one purpose, and that seemed to be to put as great
a distance as possible between himself and the Germans.
He had been gassed, and had evidently been the first
to get out of the trenches. Loping along at a gait that he
could, if necessary, maintain for hours, he fled by with
tail between his legs, tongue hanging out and ears well
back. And as he passed he gave us a look which plainly
said, "Silly fools to stand there when you could get out;
just wait there and you will get yours." And on he
went, doubtless galloping into the German lines on the
opposite side of the salient.
By this time our eyes had begun to run water, and
became bloodshot. The fumes of the gas which had
reached us irritated our throats and lungs, and made us
cough. We decided that this gas was chiefly chorine,
with perhaps an admixture of bromine, but that there
was probably something else present responsible for
the irritation of our eyes.
A lull in the cannonading made it possible to dis-
tinguish the heavy rattle of rifle and machine gun fire,
and it seemed to me to be decidedly closer.
95
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
The Canadian artillery evidently received a mes-
sage to support, and down to our right the crash of our
field guns, and their rhythmical red flashes squirting
from the hedgerows, focussed our attention and added
to the din.
Up the road from St. Julien came a small party of
Zouaves with their baggy trousers and red Fez caps.
We stepped out to speak to them, and found that they
belonged to the French Red Cross. They had been
driven out of their dressing station by the poisonous gas,
and complained bitterly of the effect of it on their lungs.
Shortly afterwards the first wounded Canadian
appeared — a Highlander, — sitting on a little cart drawn
by a donkey which was led by a peasant. His face
and head were swathed in white bandages, and he
looked as proud as a peacock.
Soon after, another Canadian Highlander came
trudging up the road, with rifle on shoulder and face
black with powder. He stated that his platoon had been
gassed, and that the Germans had got in behind them
about a mile away, in such a manner that they had been
forced to fight them on front and rear. Finally the
order had been passed, "Every man for himself," and
he had managed to get out ; he was now on his way back
to report to headquarters.
Then came a sight that we could scarcely credit.
Across the fields coming towards us, we saw men run-
ning, dropping flat on their faces, getting up and run-
ning again, dodging into disused trenches, and keeping
every possible bit of shelter between themselves and the
enemy while they ran. As they came closer we could
96
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
see that they were French Moroccan troops, and evi-
dently badly scared. Near us some of them lay down
in a trench and lit cigarettes for a moment or two, only
to start up in terror and run on again. Some of them
even threw away their equipment after they had passed,
and they all looked at us with the same expression that
the dog had, evidently considering us to be madmen to
stay where we were. It was quite apparent that the
Moroccan troops had given way under the gas attack,
and that a break, doubtless a large one, had been made
in the French front line.
Then our hearts swelled with a pride that comes
but seldom in a man's life — the pride of race. Up the
road from Ypres came a platoon of soldiers marching
rapidly; they were Canadians, and we knew that our
reserve brigade was even now on the way to make the
attempt to block the German road to Calais.
Bullets began to come near. Neither of us said
a word for a while as we saw spurt after spurt of dust
kicked up a few yards in front of us.
"I think we had better move, Colonel," said Cap-
tain Rankin at last. As he spoke, a bullet split a brick
in the road about three feet away from me, and slid
across the road leaving a trail of dust.
"I think we had," I said as I walked over, picked
up the spent bullet and dropped it in my pocket. An-
other bullet pinged over head and another spat up the
road dust in front of us. "Those are aimed bullets," I
said. "The Germans cannot be far away; it's time to
move." It was then about 6.30 and we walked back to
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
Wieltze, near which we met our anxious chauffeur com-
ing out to meet me.
Canadian soldiers with boxes of cartridges on their
shoulders ran up the road towards the trenches; others
carrying movable barb-wire entanglements followed
them. A company of Canadians took to the fields on
leaving Wieltze, and began advancing in short rushes
in skirmishing order towards the German front, while
their officer walked on ahead swinging his bamboo cane
in the most approved fashion. Another company was
just leaving the village, loading their rifles as they
hurried along. I overheard one chap say, as he thrust a
cartridge clip into place, "Good Old Ross."
As we approached Wieltze we could see ammuni-
tion wagons galloping up the other road which forks
at Wieltze and runs to Langemarck. Turning into the
fields they would wheel sharply, deposit their loads, and
gallop wildly off again for more ammunition, while the
crashes and flashes of the guns showed that they were
being served with redoubled vigor.
At the edge of the village the peasant, whom we had
seen preparing his little garden and sowing seeds earlier
in the afternoon, came down to the gate and asked
rather apologetically if we thought that the Germans
would be there to-night; "in any case did monsieur not
think it would be wise for the women and children to
leave?"
Behind him, standing about the door steps, were
the members of his family, each with a bundle suited to
their respective ages. The smallest, a girl about six
years of age, had a tiny bundle in a handkerchief ; the
98
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
next, a boy about eight, had a larger one. All were
dressed in their best Sunday clothes, and carried um-
brellas— a wise precaution in the climate of Flanders.
We agreed with him that it was wise to move away, be-
cause it would be possible to return, if the Germans
were driven back, whereas if they stayed they might be
killed.
As we talked to the father, the eldest, a boy of
eighteen, came down to the gate with his grandmother,
a little old lady perhaps eighty years of age, and
weighing about as many pounds. The boy stooped
down to pick her up in his arms, but she shook her head
in indignant protest. Accordingly he crouched down,
she put her arms around his neck, he took her feet under
his arms, and set off down the road towards Ypres with
the rest of the family trailing behind him. About ten
o'clock that night my friend, Captain Eddie Robert-
son, standing with his regiment on the roadside ten
miles nearer Poperinge, waiting for orders to advance,
noticed a youth with a little old lady on his back,
trudging by in the stream of fleeing refugees.
Wieltze was a picture; the kind of moving picture
that the movie man would pay thousands for, but never
can obtain. The old adage held that you always see
the best shots when you have no gun. Small detach-
ments of Canadian troops moved rapidly through the
streets. Around the Canadian Advanced Dressing Sta-
tion was a crowd of wounded Turcos and Canadians
waiting their turn to have their wounds dressed. All
the civilians were loading their donkey or dog carts
99
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
with household goods and setting out towards Ypres,
sometimes driving their cows before them.
As we climbed into the car, which had been placed
for shelter behind the strongest lookingwall in the town,
and slowly started for Ypres, a section of the 10th Cana-
dian Battalion came along with our friend, Major Mac-
laren, whom I had talked to at Brielen earlier in the
afternoon, at its head. I waved my hand to him and
called "good luck." He waved his hand in answer with
a cheery smile. A couple of hours later he was wounded
and was sent back in the little battalion Ford car, with
another officer, to the ambulance in Vlamertinge.
While passing through Ypres a shell blew both officers'
heads off.
At the fork of the roads, Lt.-Col. Mitchell of
Toronto, of the headquarters staff, who was directing
traffic, came over and asked us if we had seen certain
Canadian battalions pass by. We told him we had and
we shook hands as we wished each other "good luck,"
not knowing whether we should ever meet again. We
picked up a load of wounded Turcos and took them
into the ambulance at Ypres. Fresh shell holes pitted
the road and dead horses lay at the side of it. One
corner in particular near Ypres had been shelled very
heavily, and broken stone, pave and bricks lay scattered
about everywhere.
All the while the roar of guns and the whistle of
flying shells had increased. We reached the ambu-
lance in Ypres between dusk and dark; it was light
enough to see that the front of the building, which had
been intact earlier in the afternoon, had been already
100
THE SECOND BATTLE'QF YPRES
scarred with pieces of flying shells. The shutters which
had been closed were torn and splintered, and the brick
work was pitted with shrapnel. We forced our Turcos
to descend and enter the ambulance, though from their
protests I judged they would have much preferred a
continuous passage to the country beyond Ypres.
As we entered the door Major Hardy (now
Colonel Hardy, D.S.O.) was found operating on one
of his own men; the man had been blown of! a water
cart down the street and his leg and side filled with
shrapnel. It was rather weird to see this surgeon coolly
operating as if he was in a hospital in Canada, and to
hear the shells screaming overhead and exploding not
far away, any one of which might at any moment blow
building, operator and patient to pieces. That is one
of the beauties of the army system ; each one in the army
"carries on" and does his own particular bit under all
circumstances.
A terrific bang in the street outside, followed by
the rattling and crash of glass and falling of bricks,
caused Rad to remark "there goes the good old Lozier
car." At the same time the piercing shrieks of a woman
rang out down the street, shrieks as from a woman who
might have had her child killed. We went to the door
and looked out; the Lozier was still intact, though later
on we found the rounded corner of the metal body of
the car bent as though a piece of pave or metal of several
pounds weight had struck it, and the floor of the car
was covered with bits of broken glass and brick.
Major Hardy asked us to take his patient on to
Vlamertinge as it was doubtful when a motor ambu-
101
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
lance would return, and we were glad to do so. After
being given the usual dose of anti-tetanic serum, he was
wrapped in blankets and made comfortable in the back
seat. We shook hands with the Major and started off for
Vlamertinge.
It was too risky to go through the centre of the
town on account of falling walls, chimneys, and
the swiftly descending fragments of houses blown sky-
ward. So we skirted the town and tried to get down
'i side road to Vlamertinge. It was choked with refu-
gees and transport, and the military traffic policeman
strongly advised us to take the main road from Ypres.
As there was no alternative we drove back to the water
tower in the city. This road was clear, for nobody was
going into Ypres at that time by that particular inter-
secting road.
We made all possible speed to get through the town
and into the main Ypres-Vlamertinge road. There
wagons began to pass us going the opposite way, the
horses whipped into a gallop as they made haste to get
through the town to the bridge-head on the far side.
Motor transport lorries also drove at full speed to get
by this danger point as quickly as possible. As we
cleared the town again, the traffic became heavier, and
we gradually worked into and formed part of a great
human stream with various eddies and back currents.
It was now dark, and but for the feeble light of a
young moon, which sometimes broke through the clouds
and faintly illuminated the road, nothing could be seen.
All headlights were out, and not even the light of a hand
lantern or flashlight was permitted. Yet one's eyes be-
102
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
came accustomed to the dark, and when the pale moon-
light came through we could dimly see over on our
right a line of French Turcos moving like ghosts along
towards Vlamertinge. Next them were the fleeing refu-
gees with their bundles, wagons and push carts, and
their cows being driven before them. If there was a
cart, the old man or old lady would invariably be seated
on the top of the load, sometimes holding the baby.
In the centre of the road we groped our way along
with infinite care. A shadow would sometimes bear
down on the car, and suddenly swerve to one side as a
horseman trotted by. A motor lorry would approach
within a few feet of us before the driver would
see, and stop before we crashed into each other. On
the left were troops standing by all along the roadside,
and we felt very proud as we realized that they were
Canadians, and that they were the only troops at hand
to plug the gap made by the German poison gases.
At one time the road became jammed, and we
had visions of staying all night in the midst of a road
block. Gradually, with the aid of mounted gendarmes
and our military police, the mass, composed of cows,
wagons, horses, dogcarts, refugee men, women and chil-
dren, with hand wagons and baby carriages; motor lor-
ries, horse transport, lumber wagons, motor cycles, tour-
ing cars, and mounted horsemen, was dissolved, and
slowly began again to flow in both directions. Look-
ing backward we could see the red glow of fires burning
in different parts of Ypresand the bright flashes of shells
as they burst over that much German-hated city. All
around the salient star shells flared into the sky and re-
103
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
mained suspended for a few minutes as they threw a
white glare over the surrounding country, silhouetting
the trees against the skylike ghosts before they died
away and fell to earth.
At last we reached Vlamertinge and turned into
the yard occupied by No. 3 Field Ambulance. Our
car was known, and several officers came forward to see
if we had any authentic news. Our patient, whom they
recognized as belonging at one time to themselves, was
carried into shelter, and we also entered the building.
Lying on the floors were scores of soldiers with faces
blue or ghastly green in colour choking, vomiting and
gasping for air, in their struggles with death, while a
faint odour of chlorine hung about the place.
These were some of our own Canadians who had
been gassed, and I felt, as I stood and watched them,
that the nation who had planned in cold blood, the use
of such a foul method of warfare, should not be allowed
to exist as a nation but should be taken and choked until
it, too, cried for mercy.
We could not help smiling as we shook hands with
Captain Boyd, who had been shot in the calf of the leg
and was now getting the wound dressed, particularly
when he heard that Captain Scrimger had already
been ordered to replace him. Captain Scrimger won
the V.C. the following day).
We offered our car to the Colonel of the ambu-
lance for the night, but he had to stay at his work, and
the car was not very suitable for evacuating wounded.
As we could not be of use, we reluctantly passed on out
104
THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES
of the fighting zone toward home, and the refugees
being not so numerous we could travel faster.
Near the entrance to Poperinge a British Major
came over to our car 'as we were showing our passes to
a military policeman. "Are you Canadian officers?"
he said.
"We are," I answered.
"Then would you mind telling your Canadian
transport drivers to stop going up and down this road ;
they insist on doing it, and I can't stop them."
"There is a big battle up in the salient," I said.
"Shells and many other things are needed; our men
have been sent for them and know what they want; I
wouldn't interfere with them if I were you."
He looked at us as though we were hopeless idiots,
and we drove on. The motor ambulance convoy, which
*we had been asked to have sent forward, had already
gone, and our last errand was done. Putting on our
headlights and opening the throttle, we tore homeward,
reaching Merville at eleven o'clock.
When we arrived at the Mess, Captain Ellis, who
had been anxiously waiting, said that we looked grey,
drawn and ghastly, partly perhaps from the effects of
the poisonous gas. We had an intensely interested
listener as we recounted our experiences and drew plans
of the line as we thought it probably existed at the
moment. Whether the Germans could get through or
not was the dominant question. Nothing lay between
them and Calais but the Canadian Division, and whe-
ther the Canadians could hang on long enough in face
of this new terror of poison gas until new troops arrived,
105
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
no one could even venture to guess. We felt that they
would do all that men could do under the circumstances,
but without means of combating the poison it was doubt-
ful what any troops could do. Supposing the Germans
just kept on discharging gas? Nothing under heaven
apparently could stop them from walking over the dead
bodies of our soldiers, choked to death like drowned
men. We could not decide the question that time alone
could answer, and we went to bed to spend a long sleep-
less night longing for the day, when we would get news
of the battle.
The next afternoon I was sent for by General Sir
Henry Rawlinson, commanding the corps in our area.
He had heard that I had seen the gas discharged the
day before and wanted to know what the gas was, what
the effect had been, how it could be combated and, in
fact, all about it. When I had finished my narrative
he placed a large map in front of me and asked me to
sketch out the part of the line where the gas had been
discharged, and how I thought the line should be at the
present moment. I did my best, tyro as I was. It was
one of the satisfactory moments of my life when the
General drew the map to one side and showed me a
map of the line as it really was, given him by General
Foch that very morning. The maps were identical, and
the General smiled a smile of appreciation as he
thanked me for the assistance that our laboratory had
given in helping to diagnose and combat this new mode
of warfare, and I left his office feeling that we had
been of some real use in the war even if we never did
anything else.
106
CHAPTER VIII.
THE AFTERMATH OF THE GAS.
THE day after the gas attack I reported to head-
quarters, that in my opinion the gas used was chlor-
ine with possibly an admixture of bromine, and that a
mask with a solution of "Hypo" to cover the nose and
mouth would probably absorb the gas and destroy its
effectiveness. I also suggested that the battle area be
searched for masks which the Germans were sure to
have had prepared as a protection for their own men.
(Most of the morning I had spent in bed with an attack
of bronchitis suffering from the effects of the gas.)
Later I learned that German prisoners had given
the information that the gas was contained in cylinders
but would not admit that they knew what kind of gas it
was. They also said that the men who operated the
tanks wore protective masks and gloves.
All that day the Indians of the Lahore division
from our area were passing through our town on the
way to Ypres.
On Sunday afternoon Captain Ellis and I left for
Vlamertinge to find out just what had happened. The
suspense had become terrible and we felt like quitters
because we were not in the salient fighting with our
fellows. At Poperinge we saw a cart on the road beside
a house which had been recently blown down by a shell.
As we drove slowly by, a wounded old woman was
carried out and laid beside the bodies of two other
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
white-haired women who had just been dug out of the
ruins. Though fatally injured, they were still living,
and I shall never forget the pitiful looks on those ashy
gray faces as they looked up into my face with eyes
like those of sheep about to be slaughtered.
At No. 3 Canadian Field Ambulance we found
that 2,600 Canadian casualties had already passed
through during the three days since the gas attack. We
heard there that Major Mothersill, Medical officer of
the Eighth Battalion, had been lying out in front of the
lines for two days, unable to move and apparently
paralyzed. It was one of those personal experiences
which brings the war home to us with startling reality,
for I had made a tour of his area with him just a few
days before. You hear of the loss of a thousand men
and it affects you very little, but if you know personally
a single one of the thousand, the news of his death may
give you the blues for days. The loss of a million un-
known Russians does not really mean as much to one
as the loss of a single friend.
On our return trip we passed a large number of
London busses loaded with wounded ; they were
all sitting-up cases and were a very happy look-
ing lot. It was an odd sight to see bus after bus tear-
ing down that long, straight road, with the tall trees on
either hand, each bus with rows of soldiers seated on the
upper deck, with heads and arms bandaged, looking
about at everything with the greatest interest, — like tour-
ists rather than men who had just come from the very
gates of hell. They waved hearty greetings to the
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THE AFTERMATH OF THE GAS
French artillery which was then pouring up the side
roads.
As the French 75's bumped along the roads, drawn
by rat-tailed, wiry horses, they looked like pale blue,
painted wooden guns, instead of what they were — the
deadliest weapon that the war had till then produced.
An officer who watched them the following day gallop
onto the field, unlimber and start firing, told me that
the way their fire covered that front was an absolutely
uncanny sight. With mathematical precision the shells
would begin to drop at one end of a field and cut out a
belt across it from side to side, the belt growing as each
explosion threw up a splash of dust from the showers
of shrapnel ; having completed the belt they would be-
gin another a few yards farther back until the whole
field had been covered and not a soldier hiding any-
where in it left alive.
On the day of the first gas attack there were soldiers
everywhere back of the line; that day as we drove home
there was not a single one to be seen. They had all
gone forward toward the front where they could be of
the greatest use.
When the French people of the little villages
through which we passed saw the name "Canadian" on
our car they nudged each other and repeated the word
"Canadien." It was the name in everybody's mouth
those days, for it was now general knowledge that the
Canadian divison had thrown itself into the gap and
stemmed the German rush to Calais. The whole world
was ringing with the story of how the colonial troops
had barred the road to the channel to a force many times
109
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
its size in men and guns, and armed with poison gas,
the most terrible device of warfare that had yet been
invented.
And well may it be said that the 22nd of April,
1915, was, to the allies, one of the two most vital days
since the beginning of the war. The Germans had
planned to break through and seize the French coast
along the narrowest portion of the channel. Once
established there they would have attempted to cover
the channel with their long range naval guns, while they
would have established for their submarines harbours
which could be protected by the same guns. Under
such circumstances, cross channel traffic and the maint-
enance of our lines of communication would hare
proved to be a very difficult matter indeed, for the subs
would then, at any time, have easy access to our channel
path.
The importance of the Canadian fight during that
first twenty-four hours was out of all ratio to the size of
our forces. The whole success of the battle hinged on the
attack by two battalions on the morning of the 23rd of
April. These two battalions were sent up into the
centre of the gap left in the line by the retreat of the
French colonials. Supported by four field guns, they
advanced steadily under a terrific fire from the enemy.
As General Mercer said to me afterwards, it was,
according to the book, probably as crazy a bit of mili-
tary tactics as could possibly have been tried, but the
very daring of the attempt proved its success. The
Germans, believing that such a counter attack must be
backed up by much stronger forces, hesitated to come on
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THE AFTERMATH OF THE GAS
and the day was saved, for while they hesitated and
made sure of their ground, troops were hurried up from
other parts of the line and the Huns had missed their
chance. That first night if the Germans had simply
walked ahead they would have found nothing to stop
them, but they were too much dazed with their own
success to realize the situation and take advantage of it.
Naturally we were thrilled with pride at the suc-
cess of the division ; we had been present at its birth ; we
had watched it through the various vicissitudes of its
eventful career; and now its great opportunity had
come. Now its name had been indelibly written on the
scroll of fame. It had saved the situation in one of the
most critical happenings of the whole war.
The next day the General of the fourth corps,
accompanied by his staff, paid a visit to our laboratory,
and the General told us that the Germans had tried
their gases on the Belgians the very day after they had
gassed the French and Canadian colonial troops. But
the Belgians breathed through wet handkerchiefs till
the gas had passed over, and when the Germans came
on, full of confidence in the efficacy of their deadly new
weapon, the Belgians gave them a severe punishing.
On April 27th the three of us started out after 5
o'clock to the Canadian area in search of news. The
military policeman on the road at the outskirts of
Poperinge on being queried said, "All right, no shells
to-day in Pop." But we got only about 150 yards into
the town when there was a terrific hair-raising explo-
sion near us, followed by showers of bricks and bits
of whizzing shell. It was a shell of very high calibre,
111
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
and as we passed the next cross street and looked up it,
we could see four houses settling into dust and a few
people running towards the spot. A telephone wire
cut by a flying fragment fell upon a car just ahead of
us. It looked funny to see the doors of the houses along
the street belch forth their inmates who rushed to the
shutters, banged them to, rushed in again and no doubt
hid themselves in the cellars. It reminded us exactly
of the actions of a flock of chickens when a hawk ap-
pears in the sky.
A moment after, as we were leaving the town, an-
other shell went screaming overhead, exploded to our
right near the station close to the road, while a third
went off on our left. Some Belgian soldiers who were
bringing in a wounded man on their shoulders dropped
flat upon the ground, letting the poor wounded chap
fall with a crash. We opened the throttle and speeded
on. A motor ambulance convoy loaded with wounded
flew by us toward the base; in fact everything on the
road was going at top speed that evening. We buttoned
our coats up to our throats and took a fresh grip on our
cigars as we tore up the road into that "unhealthy" dis-
trict, feeling that we must go on. "This is the life,"
said the Major with a grin. Perhaps it was foolish but
the excitement was worth the danger.
In the fields by the roadside were picketed cavalry
horses, saddled and bridled, and ready to be mounted at
a moment's notice. No contingency appeared to have
been overlooked; everything had been put into readi-
ness for anything that might happen.
At Vlamertinge everybody was standing by ready
112
THE AFTERMATH OF THE GAS
for the word to move. Heavy shelling had been going
on all day and the shells were still coming pretty thick-
ly. The street was littered with broken bricks, fresh
plaster and other debris; on all sides were crumbled
walls and ruined houses. The office of the A.D.M.S.,
Colonel Foster, had a shell hole right through it and
his desk was covered with plaster. The office staff
occupied the cellar and they informed us that the offi-
cers were housed in a white chateau on the opposite
side of the street. There were several officers there;
most of them evidently thought that we were fools to
come voluntarily into a place that they would have
given a good deal to be out of.
The front line was being held, and things were
going fairly well in the salient. But sitting around in
a building that was liable to be blown up any moment
was not pleasant work for either officers or men, and
some of the men who had been subjected to the strain
for several days showed unmistakable evidences of it.
The Canadians had lost heavily but as yet no accurate
figures were obtainable on account of the complicated
nature of the fighting and the fact that the wounded
were going through several ambulances.
We did not stay any longer than was necessary to
obtain the news and our return trip to Poperinge was
a record one. We saw freshly-killed horses on the
roadside, and in the Grande Place in "Pop" the fresh
shell holes showed that the process of hammering was
still going on with undiminishing vigour. Dinner was
half over when we reached our mess that evening. As
we entered the room a tin bowl fell to the floor with a
113
9
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
crash. Every person in the room started as though it
were a bomb, and we, fresh from our day's experiences,
ducked our heads for safety. Tired out, we said nothing
about our trip and went to bed early.
The next few days were full of interest. The news
from the Canadian Division was both good and bad.
they had had 6,000 casualties, — practically half of the
infantry, — but all the reports, even those of the Germans
themselves, agreed in giving them credit for having
fought like fiends and having spoiled the great German
plan. The first lists of the killed had come out and con-
tained the names of many of my personal friends, and
the sense of a great pride in the achievements of one
division was marred by the sorrow for their loss.
The town of Poperinge was now deserted. Travel-
ling in that direction one morning I met streams of
refugees coming from it and on entering it found it like
a city of the dead. Not a soul could be seen except one
small unit which had been temporarily forgotten. The
French gendarmes had driven the inhabitants out of
the place because it was said to be full of spies who had
been of great assistance to the enemy at a time when any
bit of information might be of incalculable value to
them. From one of the men of this stranded unit I ob-
tained a three-pound piece of the 15-inch shell which
had exploded close to us a few days before.
A non-com of the sanitary section who had come
through Ypres an hour before told me that he had
seen an old woman over 80 years of age sweeping the
front sidewalk and polishing the windows. She was
perhaps the only remaining resident.
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THE AFTERMATH OF THE GAS
The city was being steadily reduced to ruins by a
continuous avalanche of shells and he spoke to her and
tried to induce her to come with him but without avail.
"She had lived there all her life and she intended to die
there ; it had been her custom to clean the windows and
sweep the sidewalks, and if Providence willed that
shells should come and knock down her neighbors'
houses and make a lot of dust, she would just have to
sweep oftener, what was the difference anyway?" And
so he had to leave her.
The laboratory at this time was a place of much
interest and many distinguished generals and medical
men came to find out about the gas and methods of
combating it. General Headquarters had sent for me
to watch some practical field experiments and to give
them the benefit of our experience on this question.
With the chief engineer of the local army we carried out
some experimental work of our own on a large scale.
These experiments led to certain recommendations
which were later found to be of value in making the
German gases less effective. We also did a good deal of
experimental laboratory work with other gases which
might possibly be used, with the object of discovering
their antidotes.
On May Sth the Canadian transport was strung
along the roads leading from Ypres and we knew that
the division was out for a rest. We hunted out some of
our friends in Bailleul, — some of the few that were
left. There were 7 of the 25 officers in the 3rd (Toron-
to) battalion and 6 out of the 25 in the 48th Highlan-
ders of Toronto, though the missing ones had not all
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
been killed. They were greatly changed in appearance,
were very tired, and could tell little of their experiences
in any connected way; at that time they had simply a
succession of blurred impressions; they could recall a
terrible excitement but had little idea of the sequence
of events. The men, sitting around the streets of
Bailleul in the sun, looked as if they had seen and ex-
perienced more than they could ever tell.
One of my officer comrades had gone insane, and
another had been so shell shocked that he was of no
further use and had been sent to England, — the latter
was one of those officers whom I had seen in the little
club house at Winnezeele. Two of my friends had been
buried out in the front one night with two other officers
—all in the one shell hole.
The medical officer, Captain Haywood, conducted
the burial without candle or book. The green white
light from the German flares and the red flashes of
the guns was the only light to show the sad little party
where their erstwhile comrades rested. The lay par-
son, exhausted with seventy hours' continuous work, and
unable to recall a single word of the burial service,
broke huskily into this rugged commendation, "Well,
boys, they were four damn good fellows ; let us repeat
the Lord's prayer," but they couldn't manage to say even
the Lord's prayer among them.
What a setting for a soldier funeral! The black
night, the roar and flash of the guns and the green flare
of the German star shells silhouetting those bowed
heads above the soldiers' grave. What a fitting tribute
to a soldier! The broken voice with the rough and
116
THE AFTERMATH OF THE GAS
ready words of praise: "They were four damn good
fellows." What more could be said? What more would
any soldier desire?
One chap had seen General Mercer, with his aide-
de-camp by his side, crossing a fire-swept field deliber-
ately stop in the middle of it to light his pipe. Every-
body agreed that the General was the coolest man in
sight that day. The Aide himself assured me that it
took several matches to light the General's pipe and
that the matches were the slow-burning variety; he said
that it seemed to him to have taken about an hour to
light that pipe, and all the time he was wishing himself
safe in the shelter of a ditch. It had not been mere
bravado on the General's part but a deliberately
planned act to steady his men.
Some of the Canadian soldiers came into the dress-
ing stations during the battle, accoutred in wonderful
equipment that had taken their fancies. One wounded
chap wore an Indian's turban, a French officer's spurs
and a British officer's pistol.
Major W. D. Allan had seven bullet holes in his
clothing, two of them through his hat; and yet his skin
was not broken. The nearest approach to a wound was
a big triangular bruise on his shoulder, made by a piece
of spent high explosive. One of the bullets had gone
through his hat and tipped it over his eyes as his unit
was falling back from one trench to another; he said
that he was positive he had broken the world's record
for a hundred yards in the next few seconds.
The First Battalion, at whose mess I dined one
night, had lost 400 out of a total of 800 men during a
117
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
600-yard advance into the breach made by the German
gas in the face of a terrific fire.
Meanwhile preparations were in progress for a
battle in our area evidently for the purpose of relieving
the pressure on the line elsewhere, and on the 9th of
May we were wakened at 4.30 a.m. by the final bom-
bardment. I had been invited to witness the battle by
a general on the staff but I was unable to go.
The first wounded came in about noon and by four
o'clock the hospital where we took our meals was filled.
From the windows above we could see scores of wound-
ed lying in rows on stretchers in that sunny courtyard,
some conscious and others unconscious. Every con-
scious wounded soldier held a cigarette between his
lips and I even saw them going in to the operating table
smoking. The wounded were a depressed lot that day;
the men themselves realized that they had been badly
cut up for little purpose, for the wire had not been
destroyed and they had been unable to make any pro-
gress. The authorities in England had not yet realized
that high explosives were necessary to cut wire in spite
of the fact that everybody in the field knew it. It re-
quired a newspaper agitation to convert some of the
authorities as to the need of high explosives.
After a rest the Canadians took over a new piece of
line near Festubert, and a hot spot it was. We knew this
area well as far forward as the advanced dressing
stations, and had been there by day and night in the
car.
When the Canadian attack at Festubert began,
I was wakened one night by a lull in the booming of the
118
THE AFTERMATH OF THE GAS
guns, and got up to sit by the window. It was one of
those still nights in June when every sound carries for
miles. The odours of sweet flowers floated up from
the garden below, and the splash, splash of frogs hop-
ping into the river could be heard from time to time.
The guns had stopped, but the rattle of rapid rifle fire
was as distinct as if it had been only half a mile away;
then the rattle of machine guns could be distinguished,
succeeded by the explosions of hand grenades, and I
knew that the Canadians were hard at it, probably with
the bayonet. It was not a comfortable feeling to sit
seven miles away and listen to a succession of sounds
so full of meaning, nor is a vivid imagination a good
thing for a soldier to have in the field.
The following day a young lieutenant whom I had
hunted out three days before, came in to the clearing
station down the street, wounded in shoulder, head, hip
and leg, with shrapnel. That boy is now Major Mavor,
M.C., D.S.O.
Two days after, we drove over to headquarters of
the 1st army. .With the sun setting in a gorgeous glow,
and with hedges in full blossom, Flanders was trans-
formed for once that evening into a land of beauty.
About ten o'clock we heard a hum of an aeroplane
overhead and then a series of explosions, like those of a
heavy gun. Flashes were seen in the direction of a
French town where there were great steel works and we
drove home that way. The inhabitants of the country
and the hamlets along the road were all out of doors
gazing at the sky, and as we entered the bombed town
we found everybody quite excited. Eight bombs had
119
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
been dropped in the place, but none of them had any
effect, except to rouse the populace to a condition of ex-
citement.
Our headlights were burning, and suspicion was
evidently aroused as to the possibility of this being con-
nected with the attack, for we were suddenly halted
by a blue-coated French soldier stepping in front of the
car and holding his gun above his head in the usual
way while eight other French soldiers surrounded us.
Some of them pointed bayonets threateningly at us
while we were all covered by rifles. It was quite a
picture. Our headlights shone brilliantly on the three
men in front, while the faces of the others, nearly all
with moustachios and goatees, lit up by the moon and
the glare of the red lights from the works, looked most
ferocious. The slender, flashing French bayonets
seemed to be at least three feet long.
As we waited to be identified, a British sergeant
lounged forward, a little the worse for beer, and nodded
cordially as he leaned carelessly on the front door and
explained all about the bombs. At a word from him
the Frenchmen fell back, and we moved on. Every
house seemed to have a soldier on guard, but we were
not questioned further, and drove peacefully home
along the canal, whose iris-decked banks were perfect-
ly reflected in its glassy waters in the brilliant moon-
light.
Again I changed my billet by the bridge to live
at a fine old house farther up the river. It had a beau-
tiful old garden which was separated from the street by
a high iron fence on a brick foundation. Walnut trees
120
THE AFTERMATH OF THE GAS
from the garden overhung the street and shaded a little
octagonal summer house. The old-fashioned, square,
red brick house faced the lawn, in the centre of which
was an elongated brick-lined pool of water with a
bridge over it. In the centre of the lawn was a large
polished silver ball on a pedestal; this was regarded as
a fine ornament. The lawn was separated from the gar-
den by a high hedge. The garden proper, a real old-
fashioned one, containing many berry bushes, fruit trees,
and a few old-fashioned flowers, ran right back to the
river. A brick boundary wall kept the river from
washing away the banks, and brick steps led down to a
little floating platform. There was much shade in that
old French garden ; it was the most peaceful and restful
place that I ever found in France. Even aeroplanes
sailing overhead on their missions of destruction seemed
from my garden to be harmless.
I always took my French lesson there after dinner,
when the bees droned about and one had an irresistible
desire to sleep. My teacher, Professor Paul Balbaud,
had been a lecturer in Toronto University, and at this
time was drawing the magnificent sum of one cent a
day as a private in the French 77th territorial regiment.
On one occasion he presented me with ten days' pay
which he had received that very morning, and I had
the two five-sou silver pieces made into watch charms.
Monsieur Balbaud was engaged in the telegraph ser-
vice, and was an excellent teacher. Later on that year
the pay of the French soldier was raised to five cents
a day.
Madam Carre, a dear old lady, owned the house
121
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
and she was kindness itself. Nothing was too good for
the Canadians. Her grand-daughter, a tall good look-
ing girl of Spanish descent, twenty-one years of age, had
been married seven months when the war broke out,
and her husband, an artillery man, had been killed.
Three times a day during that first year did the girl go
to church to pray for the safety of her husband, for she
would not believe him dead.
I was wakened the very first night at my new billet,
about 2 a.m., by the rat-a-tat of a kettle-drum, and two
dreary notes continuously repeated by a bugle. It was
the alarm for a fire at a farmhouse about half a mile
from town. Our men from the hospital helped to get
most of the furniture out, and were standing around
watching the farmhouse and barns burn down, when the
17 Brigade Lancers appeared with the hand hose-reel,
which, however, proved to be useless. The Lancers had
broken into the fire hall and stolen the apparatus.
The local firemen afterwards came to the fire hall
but found the engine gone; after some discussion they
went home and donned their white duck trousers, blue
tunics, and polished brass helmets. The fire chief and
first deputy then had a dispute about something which
resulted in the deputy going home in a huff, while the
chief and the second deputy (the whole fire brigade)
resplendent in their spotless uniforms of white, blue and
gold, marched out to the fire. The British soldiers
lined up when they saw them coming, and gave them
three rousing cheers, while one of the Tommies solemn-
ly swept the road before them with a broom. As my
122
THE AFTERMATH OF THE GAS
chauffeur "Rad" said, "It was just like a scene from a
blinking comic opera."
The area was now well known to us, for, in the
course of our work, we had been over every bit of
road in it. It was very noticeable how the farmhouses
along some roads, which paralleled the front line
trenches about one and a half miles behind it, gradually
disappeared. On Monday perhaps we would have to
go down to a certain battery located on this road, and
there would be a dozen intact farmhouses in the course
of a half mile. On Friday of the same week, one or
more of them would be burned down, while the shell
holes in the fields and road around them indicated
deliberate concentration of fire.
Our work was interesting and we kept busy all the
time. The monotony of working seven days a week,
however, becomes very great after a few weeks and
seriously affects the health and the ability to work. In
the other army services work came in periodical bursts ;
ours was a steady grind of seven days a* week.
We saw the hay mowed and gathered in; we
noticed the grain fields gradually turn to gold, saw the
reaping and all other operations of mixed farming
carried on in all its interesting detail. Meanwhile the
First Canadian Division had settled down in the Ploeg-
steert section, which was out of our area, and the second
Canadian Division had arrived and joined up with
them. The Second Division had come over to teach the
First Division a lot of things and there was a fair
amount of feeling between them as will be seen from
the following confidential conversation between two
123
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
brothers in different divisions, upon meeting for the
first time:
"Say, we have had a hell of a time trying to live
down your reputation," said the younger brother.
"Yes, and you will also have a hell of a time trying
to live up to it, too," retorted the senior.
And there the matter rested until events subse-
quently showed that both divisions were composed of
exactly the same stuff.
124
CHAPTER IX.
THE MEDICAL ORGANIZATION OF THE BRITISH ARMY.
EACH battalion at the front has a headquarters,
usually in a dug-out or a sheltered farm house close
to the lines: each brigade, consisting of four infantry
battalions has a headquarters farther to the rear: each
division, consisting of three' infantry brigades, artillery,
etc. has a divisional headquarters in some town, still
farther to the rear, out of shell range : each corps com-
prising two to four divisions has its headquarters in a
town back of this again : each army, composed of two
to four corps, has its headquarters still farther to the
rear, and the popular idea of the Tommy is that since
the respective headquarters occupy bigger and bigger
chateaux the farther back they go, away back some-
where in a town all by himself, living in a big castle
from which he operates everything, is the commander-
in-chief of the whole British Army.
General headquarters is usually a very busy place,
for there are the heads of the various services of the
army, and all the orders affecting the army as a whole
are issued through it. The offices of the chiefs of the
services are business offices and are operated in a most
business-like way. The system is so perfect that it is
difficult to escape from it should an order be neglected
or a duty left undone.
Among these chiefs is the Director-General of
Medical Services of the British Army in the field, Gen-
125
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
eral Sir Arthur Sloggett. Through him and his deputy,
General Macpherson, went all the general orders affect-
ing the health of the army.
At the head of each army medical service is a
Surgeon-General (D.M.S., or Director of Medical
Services), and at the head of each corps a full colonel
(D.D.M.S. or Deputy Director of Medical Service).
The chief medical man of each division is also a full
colonel (the A.D.M.S. or Assistant Director of JMedi-
cal Services), and he is responsible for the operation of
the field ambulances and the evacuation of the wound-
ed to the casualty clearing station while his division
is in the firing line. The medical officers of battalions
and the sanitary squad are also under him.
The casualty clearing stations and the mobile
laboratories, are under the D.M.S. of the army, who is
responsible for the clearing of the hospitals by motor
ambulance convoys and by hospital train.
There are normally three field ambulances to
each division and one casualty clearing station. The
number of base hospitals to each division is normally
two, but as many of these are utilized as are needed.
They are scores of miles from the fighting zone, and
do not particularly concern us here.
When a battalion medical officer or sanitary officer
wishes to make a report or suggestion he does so through
the A.D.M.S. of the division. In the same way the
A.D.M.S. of the division communicates with the
D.D.M.S. of the corps; the D.D.M.S. of the corps with
the D.M.S. of the army, and the D.M.S. of the army
with the D.G.M.S. at G.H.Q. A battalion medical offi-
126
THE MEDICAL ORGANIZATION OF ARMY
cer cannot go over the head of his A.D.M.S., nor could
the latter pass his D.D.M.S. to make a report or sugges-
tion. Everything must go up or down the system through
the various heads, and no side stepping is permitted.
The front line trenches were about seven miles
from our laboratory which was located in a town with
three casualty clearing stations, a railroad and canal.
This made it possible to evacuate the wounded rapidly
to the base by means of hospital trains and barges dur-
ing an engagement.
The system which enables a sick or wounded man
to be removed from the front is simple enough. Each
day the medical officer of a battalion, who himself may
be located in a dug-out in the trenches themselves or
in a cellar of a house not far behind the trenches, holds
a "sick parade" at his "regimental aid post." During
a battle the wounded are collected by the regimental
stretcher bearers and brought to the aid post.
Any soldier who is feeling unwell reports to the
M.O. of the battalion who, if the trouble is a minor
one, may give him some suitable medicine. It is one of
the difficulties of the M.O. to distinguish between a
case of genuine illness and a fakir or "scrimshanker,"
and a good supply of common sense and a knowledge
of human nature is a great asset in making correct diag-
noses. It is almost impossible, for example, to distin-
guish between a genuine case of rheumatism and a
clever imitation of it, because the only symptoms are
pains, the effects of which can easily be simulated by
a soldier. If the man shows serious symptoms he is
sent back to the "advanced dressing station" which
127
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
will probably be a mile or so behind the front line
trenches, if possible in a house and on a road accessible
to motor ambulances.
If the man can walk he goes through the nearest
communication trench; if wounded he is given first aid,
and if unable to walk he is helped or carried back by
stretcher bearers from the ambulance — to the dressing
station.
Some of these dressing stations taking in wounded
under shell fire were located in shell-proof dugouts.
At' many points light narrow gauge railroads had been
built which ran from the dressing stations right up to
the trenches. On these railways little cars pushed by
hand were used both for bringing out the wounded
during a battle and for taking in food, water and other
supplies. It is, of course, impossible to lay such railways
in many parts of the lines where they would be exposed
to direct observation by the enemy, but they are becom-
ing more and more numerous as their value in saving
time and labour in the "man handling" of food and
trench supplies has been proved. At one of these dress-
ing stations where the railway came right up to the shell
proof dugouts fresh shell holes in the neighborhood
testified to the fact that the work of the field ambu-
lances is at times not unmixed with excitement.
The cases which accumulate at the advanced
dressing station are given further treatment if re-
quired, and are evacuated by motor ambulance, usually
at night, as the road to the station is frequently under
the enemy's observation, to the field ambulance proper
128
THE MEDICAL ORGANIZATION OF ARMY
where they are given further treatment or dressings as
the necessity may be.
From the field ambulance the sick and wounded
are cleared by motor ambulance convoy to the casualty
clearing station, or possibly in cases of tired or slightly
shell-shocked officers and men, to the rest stations or
convalescent hospitals, of which there are a number
well behind the firing line.
At the casualty clearing station the men are
checked over, their wounds redressed, operations per-
formed, and all the work done necessary to enable the
men to be passed on to the base hospital by hospital
train or barge. These clearing stations, of which
there are usually three in a town, may keep certain seri-
ous cases for days until it is deemed advisable to send
them on.
While one clearing station is filling up and treat-
ing the patients, the other will be sending all possible
treated cases down the line. From the base hospitals,
which are near the sea, the men are forwarded as soon
as advisable by hospital ships for distribution among
the hospitals of England.
While a battle is in progress the men pass through
this system so rapidly that they may be wounded one
morning and be in a hospital in England the next.
The medical officer, of course, is attached to the
battalion, and goes everywhere with it, and under him
are a number of stretcher bearers who gather up the
wounded. The advanced dressing station is merely
an advanced party from the field ambulance which
itself is divided into three sections, each of which may
129
10
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
operate independently according to the nature of the
country. Each ambulance is self-contained, having its
own transport, and by using tents can work in an area
which has no houses or other shelter.
The casualty clearing station, on the other hand,
having an established capacity of nearly 600 beds, has
much heavier equipment and is not supposed to be a
mobile unit, though it is capable of moving with the aid
of its two lorries by making repeated trips. Many of
the casualty clearing stations are located in huts which
can be torn down and moved forward and rebuilt by
the engineers and construction units.
There is also in each division a sanitary section
composed of one officer and 25 men, whose function it
is to keep an eye on the sanitation of the divisional area,
report failure on the part of units to observe the estab-
lished sanitary regulations, see that the incinerators
are operated, have new sources of drinking water tested,
look after the bath houses on occasion, search for cases
of typhoid fever, etc., among the civilian population,
and, in general, make itself as useful as possible.
The British army regulations are such that each
officer and man must be a sanitarian and must not only
observe the regulations but see that others do the same;
the principle underlying this system being that "if each
before his doorstep swept the village would be clean."
Consequently it is not left to the sanitary section to
clean up a divisional area, but rather to report those
responsible for not keeping it clean. In this way every
man is made a responsible party, and if the officers of
130
THE MEDICAL ORGANIZATION OF ARMY
any unit see that the regulations are enforced by each
man, the unit will be a sanitary one.
Naturally as the battalion M.O. is directly connect-
ed with the field ambulance to which he sends his cases,
he is most interested in the efficiency of that unit. Since
the field ambulances are under the direct supervision of
the A.D.M.S. of the division, you will find the latter
during a battle visiting these to see that they are operat-
ing smoothly and whether more motor ambulances,
stretchers, supplies or other necessities are being pro-
vided.
At the same time you will find the D.M.S. of the
army visiting his special pets, the casualty clearing
stations, and seeing that the evacuation of the wounded
by train is working smoothly.
The hospital trains are specially fitted up with
beds, kitchens and dispensaries, and with nurses and
a medical officer in charge.
The hospital barges make the finest little hospitals
that you could desire. They are the ordinary flat-bot-
tomed square-ended Dutch barges, roofed in, and when
the interior has been cleared out they form elongated
covered floating boxes. Skylights in the roof give a
splendid light, and the barges are wide enough to allow
of two rows of beds with an aisle down the middle. The
medical officer's surgery and bedroom are at one end
of the barge, while the nurses' quarters are at the other.
The barge is entered through the roof by a stair-
way, and the first impression one gets on descending
these is ,one of cosiness and restfulness that is never
forgotten. Whether the barge is moving or at rest can-
131
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
not be determined while one is inside, because the motion
is so easy through these sleepy placid canals. Usually
only serious cases that cannot stand the vibration and
jar of a train journey are taken by the water route.
In the British Army there are specialists of renown
in medicine and surgery who are supposed to supervise
the medical and surgical work of a certain given area.
They travel about, find anything new that occurs of in-
terest, act as advisers, and hand on to other units the
special information or "stunts" that have been worked
out or discovered at home or in the field. The consult-
ing surgeons are usually to be found during a battle
operating where there is the greatest need of skilled
surgery.
Besides the sanitary officer of each division there is
a sanitary officer for each army, and a chief sanitary
officer for the whole expeditionary force. These are
all in touch with the sanitary adviser at the base and the
authorities in England. Since, under war conditions,
new developments are always taking place in this work,
the knowledge gained of practical value filters through
to the army by these channels as well as through the
scientific journals.
Each army is provided in the field with one or
more "advanced depots of medical stores" which keep
on hand and give out the drugs and medical materials
demanded by the various hospitals and medical units.
If, for example, a field ambulance wants a lot of iodine,
absorbent cotton, etc., the officer commanding sends an
ambulance with an indent signed by himself, and the
132
THE MEDICAL ORGANIZATION OF ARMY
officer in charge of the depot hands over the material
required.
There are other branches of the service, like the gas
schools and inland water service, which, though strictly
not medical, are closely akin to it.
It would be of little avail to speak of all the minute
detail, of which there is a tremendous amount in each
and every one of these offices and sections of the medical
service. The methods of filing correspondence and
records alone is wonderful when one thinks of the con-
ditions and number of men involved, and comparatively
few mistakes are made. This appears the more remark-
able when one has had numerous experiences with the
mistakes made in the offices in England where one
would think the systems would have been systematized
long ago.
The medical service of the British Army in
France is a marvel of efficiency and one that the nation
can well afford to be proud of.
133
CHAPTER X.
KEEPING THE BRITISH SOLDIER FIT.
THE history of war has always been a history of
epidemics. The fact that in an army men are
crowded together makes it easy for all communicable
diseases, once introduced, to spread with great rapidity.
And because soldiers are always associated with the
civilian population, it means that such diseases are
readily communicated from the army to the civilians,
and from the civilians to the army. It is therefore
apparent that during a war, disease, unless quickly
checked, may run like wild fire through a country, and
be disseminated far and wide by soldiers returning to
and from their own homes, or other distant places while
on leave.
Advances made in our knowledge of how diseases
are spread and controlled, particularly through recent
studies in bacteriology and immunity, have made it
possible to keep communicable diseases in absolute sub-
jection. The marvel of the age is the lack of epidemic
disease in the army to-day. This is particularly strik-
ing in view of our experiences in other recent wars. In
the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, for instance, small-
pox was fanned into a great flame, and there resulted the
largest smallpox epidemic in 80 years. It is interesting
to note that the medical authorities in Paris, in the first
year and a half of the present war, vaccinated over 25,-
134
KEEPING THE BRITISH SOLDIER FIT
000 strangers passing through Paris ; they are taking no
chances with another outbreak of smallpox.
In the Boer War the British losses through typhoid
fever alone were 8,000 against 7,700 killed by bullets,
shells and other agencies.
The British army of nearly five million men in
France and England to-day, has so little typhoid that
it is practically a negligible quantity, and this holds
with other communicable diseases. There must be
some basic reason for this freedom from contagious
diseases, for we know that such freedom does not come
by accident.
No attempt will be made to deal with those auxil-
iary forces employed to keep the men physically and
mentally fit. Such things as the provision of an ade-
quate and wholesome food supply; proper clothing;
amusements, such as games, competitions, horse shows,
cinemas, variety shows; and Y.M.C.A.'s are all an in-
tegral part of the machinery necessary to keep an army
in the field well and happy.
Only an attempt will be made to discuss the prin-
ciples underlying the prevention of disease in use in the
British army in France, — principles with which the
average layman is comparatively unacquainted.
In the first place, it is well to realize that in the
temperate climate of Europe, the vast majority of com-
municable diseases of importance from the military
standpoint are contracted largely from three sources:
Group 1. From throat and nose secretions; e.g.,
diphtheria, measles, etc.
Group 2. From biting insects; e.g., malaria,
typhus fever, plague, etc. 135
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
Group 3. Through intestinal secretions; e.g.,
typhoid fever, cholera, dysentery, etc.
The first group, which includes practically all the
ordinary diseases like measles, mumps, whooping
cough, influenza, colds, pneumonia, scarlet fever, diph-
theria, etc., is conveyed in most cases by one infected
person transmitting directly to another person,—
through coughing, spitting or sneezing, — germs present
in the nose and mouth secretions.
The second group is conveyed by insects biting
people or animals infected with the disease, and sub-
sequently biting people who are healthy. In this way
the disease-producing organism is introduced into the
body of the healthy person, and beginning to multiply,
brings about the symptoms of the disease. Malaria
is transmitted in this way by the anopheles mos-
quito; typhus fever by lice, and plague by the rat
flea. These are all diseases greatly to be dreaded in the
army.
The third group, including typhoid and paraty-
phoid fevers, cholera, and dysentery, all of which are
intestinal diseases, is large.ly conveyed from the sick to
the well indirectly through contaminated water and
food. To develop one of these diseases means that the
excreta of somebody who has the disease or who has
had it, has been taken into the mouth and swallowed,
and the germs finding a favorable medium in the intes-
tines have multiplied and produced the typical symp-
toms. One of the chief ways in which this type of infec-
tion occurs is through drinking sewage-contaminated
water or milk; another is through contamination of
136
KEEPING THE BRITISH SOLDIER FIT
food by the hands of the person excreting the germs;
and the third is through the contamination of the food
or eating utensils by flies and other insects which carry
filth germs from place to place on their feet and bodies.
With these facts in mind and with some knowledge
of sanitation and medicine it is easy to see how most
epidemic diseases can be held in check. Put briefly,
it means that the sanitary organization must be such
that the germs from one infected soldier are prevented
from reaching another, or as is sometimes said, some
link in the chain of circumstances whereby disease
germs can pass from one to another, must be broken.
The methods employed to break these links are
simple; the carrying out of the methods is oftentimes
very difficult.
It is obviously essential in the first place to remove
from the army, at the earliest possible moment after it
has been diagnosed, every case of communicable disease.
This means the adoption of measures for picking out
soldiers who show symptoms of disease, which really
comes down to the fact that the medical officers must
always be on the alert and carry out the instructions of
the director of medical services of the army with des-
patch. In the British Army this is one of the most im-
portant features in the control of epidemics. If a man
is suspected of having any communicable disease he is in-
stantly placed under quarantine until the diagnosis has
been confirmed, after which he is removed from the
army area altogether as a possible focus of infection.
The British Army takes no chances, and its wonderful
137
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
record of freedom from contagious disease proves that
it has been absolutely sound in its technique.
This is practically the only way of eliminating
diseases, such as measles and scarlet fever which can-
not be diagnosed by bacteriological methods, but of
course the procedure is employed in all other kinds of
epidemic disease as well.
Great Britain has been fortunate above all other
nations in this respect that she sent over at first a small
army of regular troops, perfectly equipped from the
medical standpoint as well as in every other way. Ef-
forts had been made for years to remove typhoid
carriers from the regular army, and naturally no soldier
was sent into the field who was known to have typhoid,
or to be a carrier of typhoid or any other contagious
disease germs. Furthermore, the soldiers had practi-
cally all been vaccinated against smallpox and inocu-
lated against typhoid fever.
As division after division was sent out to the army
in France, they too were completely equipped with
sanitary squads, casualty clearing stations, field am-
bulances, water carts, and other necessary medical
equipment. Consequently as the army grew and ex-
panded into a huge force it was thoroughly equipped
not only with the necessary apparatus for caring for
sick and wounded, but also with the experience acquired
by those already in the field. In this way the British
Army differed from all of our European Allies who
had been compelled to mobilize everything at once and
found themselves woefully lacking in medical equip-
ment and personnel, so much so in fact that they had
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KEEPING THE BRITISH SOLDIER FIT
been in the beginning unable to handle all epidemics
successfully.
With a realization that the medical equipment of
the British Army was complete; that it had been sent
into the field free of communicable diseases; that it
had been vaccinated and inoculated against two of the
most dreaded diseases, smallpox and typhoid fever,
and that every reinforcement subsequently sent out had
been carefully freed from suspicious cases of disease,
it can be readily understood that the British Army
began under auspicious circumstances, and that there-
after its freedom from contagious disease depended to
a great extent on the preventive measures adopted.
It is impossible, however, to prevent our soldiers
billeted in France from occasionally contracting com-
municable diseases from the French civilian popula-
tion, and it is obvious that as there were from 3 to 5
per cent, of the soldiers uninoculated against typhoid
fever, we would get some cases of typhoid fever.
Besides this, unless further precautions were taken,
the army would be susceptible to disease such as
cholera, dysentery and the like should there be cases of
these in the war zone.
We therefore arrive at the conclusion that, as there
might be some "carriers" and undiagnosed cases of
disease among soldiers and civilians excreting disease
germs, additional means must be adopted to destroy
such germs before they could reach other soldiers. This
is the place where sanitation and hygiene steps in, and
it is in these matters that the army of Great Britain is
unexcelled by any army in the field to-day.
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
Since the group of intestinal diseases can originate
only from the excretions of people who are giving off
the specific germs, it would be logical to endeavour to
destroy such excreta or render it incapable of contamin-
ating water or food. This is done. All excreta behind
the front line and reserve trenches is destroyed in
numerous incinerators, which are kept burning night
and day. The British Army is the only army which
has succeeded in doing this. All excreta which cannot
be burned is buried so that it cannot be reached by flies.
As it may happen through accident or carelessness
that water supplies have been contaminated, it is the
rule to sterilize all water used for drinking purposes,
either by boiling, by the use of bisulphate of soda, or
by chlorine. The chlorine method is the one in general
use in the British Army, as it is in all of the other allied
armies.
The possibility of using chlorine in the field was
brought to the attention of the British Army authorities
by the publication of a method evolved by the writer
in 1909. According to this method a stock solution of
hypochlorite of lime was added to the water, the amount
necessary for any given water being determined by a
solution of potassium iodide and starch. This was par-
ticularly useful in the trenches where it was possible to
accurately sterilize a pail or a barrel of water if neces-
sary. Small tablets of hypochlorite of lime, each one
sufficient to sterilize a pail of water, were also ordered
and issued to the first Canadian division, and proved
useful.
The great bulk of the water supply, however, is
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KEEPING THE BRITISH SOLDIER FIT
sterilized directly in the water carts by adding one or
two spoonfuls of the dry chloride of lime to the partly
filled water cart, the mixing being done by the addition
of the rest of the water and by agitation during the trip
back to the place where the cart is stationed.
In addition to this, large mobile filter units, after
a plan draughted in September, 1914, and officially
suggested by the writer in 1915 after experience in the
field, were built and issued to all the British armies.
These mobile filters are capable of filtering and ster-
ilizing large quantities of water and delivering it to
water carts or into stand pipes, ready to drink. A check
is kept on the efficiency of the filtration and sterilization
by mobile field laboratories.
Standing orders forbid the use of unboiled milk
in the army as well as fresh uncooked vegetables, so
that there is little danger from these sources. When
ones sees the peasants watering their vegetables with
sewage, the reason for such regulations are apparent.
As it is possible for flies to carry typhoid bacilli
and other disease germs from excreta to food, a con-
stant war is waged against these filthy insects. Flies
breed chiefly in manure, and one fly will produce many
millions of flies in the course of one summer. The ob-
vious method of keeping down flies is to destroy their
breeding places, and therefore it is the duty of every-
body concerned to see that all manure piles in the army
area are gotten rid of. Some of it is burned, some
spread on the fields, some buried, and so forth. On
the other hand food is screened from flies whenever
possible, and privy pits made inaccessible to them by
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
the same means. On the whole the house fly has not
yet, in so far as we know, played any great part in caus-
ing epidemic disease in the British Army in France, be-
cause so many of the precautions outlined have been
carried out
By getting rid of cases of intestinal disease, and
"carriers" of intestinal disease, destruction of excreta
and garbage, screening of food, destruction of breeding
places of flies, sterilization of drinking water, boiling
of milk and vegetables, and in the case of typhoid
and paratyphoid fevers, inoculation, the chances of in-
testinal disease germs getting through from one person
to another are comparatively small, as the results would
indicate.
To show that these results are not due to accident
an example will demonstrate : Early in the war when
the British took over from the French a section of the
line in the Ypres salient, the Belgian population in
the little village of Vlamertinge and neighborhood was
being devastated with typhoid fever, and the French
troops also had a great many cases. When the British
troops took over the line they not only escaped getting
typhoid fever themselves, but they succeeded in abso-
lutely stamping it out among the civilian population,
and in getting rid of any "carriers" of the disease.
The cases were discovered by a house-to-house in-
vestigation by "The Friends' Search Party" — a group
of Quakers who had conscientious scruples against
bloodshed. This search party notified the medical
authorities, particularly the laboratory in the area, of
any doubtful cases, and the diagnosis was then made
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KEEPING THE BRITISH SOLDIER FIT
by laboratory methods. In the last six months of my
stay in France, near the Belgian border, I do not think
that the Friends' search party unearthed a single case
of typhoid, and as a matter of fact few cases of the
ordinary epidemic diseases such as measles or diph-
theria were discovered, although they continued to make
house to house investigations and report to us regularly.
The insect-borne diseases in the Western Europe
war zone are, as far as we know, carried by flies, lice
and mosquitoes. Flies carry disease germs more or less
mechanically, and are controlled by the methods out-
lined above.
Mosquitoes are responsible for transmitting ma-
laria and yellow fever, though the latter never occurs
in Europe. Malaria in France is also comparatively
unknown, though we found the Anopheles mosquito
which is responsible for transmitting the disease else-
where.
There were also numerous cases of malaria recur-
ring in soldiers from India, Egypt, and other hot coun-
tries, so that we had both the infected individual with
the malaria parasites in his blood, and the mosquito
which was capable of carrying the organisms. Yet in
1915 we had only a dozen cases of malaria develop in
men who had never been out of England, and were
therefore, presumably, infected in France.
Possibly the chief reason for this was due to the
fact that after the mosquito has sucked the blood of an
individual infected with malaria, and been infected
with the malaria parasite, the weather was not warm
enough for the parasite to undergo its necessary trans-
143
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
formation in the blood of the mosquito. A continuous
warm period of several days' duration is necessary for
this purpose, and in France these time periods never
occurred of sufficient duration. Here was a climatic
feature which proved to be of very great importance
in preventing the spread of a disease most inimical
to the health of any army.
Here again, any cases of malaria developing were
removed as rapidly as diagnosed, so that mosquitoes did
not have much opportunity of becoming infected.
Typhus fever is one of the most dreaded diseases
in the army, for it is highly fatal, and both in former
wars and in the recent Serbian campaign has proved
a terrible scourge. It is quite a different disease from
typhoid fever, and is conveyed from man to man solely
through lice. In other words, the phrase "No lice, no
typhus" is scientifically true.
Every army in the field is a lousy army, and every
soldier in a fighting unit is more or less lousy. The
louse commonly present is the body louse, and it lays its
eggs in the seams of the uniforms and on the under-
clothes. The eggs hatch out quickly so that when a
man once becomes infected the lice multiply with great
rapidity.
For typhus to get a grip on an army means that
there must be at least one case of the disease, and there
must be lice on the case. Some of these lice will fall
off, wander away, or be left on the bedding, in the straw,
or in the patient's discarded clothes. If these lice have
bitten the typhus patient and thereby been infected, it
seemes to be necessary for a certain length of time to
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KEEPING THE BRITISH SOLDIER FIT
elapse for the organism to develop in the body of the
lice before they are able to introduce the virus into un-
infected individuals by biting them.
As yet there have been no cases of typhus fever
in the British Army in France, though it has occurred
to a greater or less extent in Germany, Austria, Russia
and Serbia. The quarantine services at the ports of
the countries bordering on the Mediterranean have pre-
vented it spreading to any other country.
Typhus fever is known as a dirt disease, and its
control is possible through the plentiful use of soap and
water. The most difficult thing for a soldier to obtain
in the field is a bath. Normally he is in the front line
trenches for a week, in the reserve trenches for a week,
and in rest for a week. This means that he cannot get
a bath for at least two weeks, and he doesn't. So that
though a soldier goes back into the trenches clean and
free from vermin he is sure to become reinfected from
lice left in the dugouts ; or some lice eggs on his clothes
perhaps have escaped destruction, and he may be as
lousy as ever when he comes out of the trenches again.
The old straw in the barns and the billets is sure to be in-
fected with lice, and it is very difficult to sterilize the
men's blankets. Consequently a persistent contin-
uous fight against this variety of vermin must be kept
up, for lice are not only a potential source of danger
in transmitting typhus fever and relapsing fever, but
they are a great source of irritation to the men and
responsible for much loss of sleep.
The greatest luxury at the front is a hot bath, and
these are provided in every divisional area on the Bri-
145
11
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
tish front. Three or four miles behind the trenches in
the rest areas, in places where a plentiful supply of
water can be obtained, the army has established bath
houses. Sometimes a brewery, or part of it, has been
taken over for this purpose, because the breweries all
have deep wells from which a plentiful supply of water
can be obtained. If the bath house is in a brewery they
may utilize the large beer barrels cut in two for baths.
These are filled with cold water and live steam turned
into the water to warm it. After the bath the men dump
the barrels, which are immediately refilled by attend-
ants, for the next group.
Most of the bath houses, however, are in impro-
vised shacks built upon the edge of creeks or ponds.
The water is pumped into an elevated reservoir and
heated frequently by means of a threshing machine
boiler, rented or purchased from some neighboring
farmer. One section of the shack is divided off for a
bathroom with a number of showers and the other
rooms devoted to the receiving of dirty clothing, stor-
ing the clean clothing, washing, drying and sterilizing.
As you pass along the road you will see perhaps a
platoon or a section of a platoon marching to the bath
house, without belt or equipment, and carrying towels.
At the bath house a certain number, say twenty men,
pass into the first room where they undress. Their
underclothes and shirts are thrown to one side to be
washed ; their caps and boots are not treated in any way.
The uniforms are hung on numbered racks and placed
in the disinfection chamber where they are immediately
treated with live steam, or they are taken into an adjoin-
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KEEPING THE BRITISH SOLDIER FIT
ing room where the seams are ironed with hot irons to
destroy lice and eggs.
The men then pass on into the bathroom where
they are given about ten minutes to luxuriate with plenty
of soap and hot water. As they pass out of the bath
through another room they are given clean socks, under-
clothes and shirts, and by the time they are dressed their
own uniforms, disinfected, are handed back to them.
The whole operation takes from twenty-five to thirty
minutes, and from a thousand to fifteen hundred men
can be put through each bath house in a day.
The discarded clothes are washed by local peasant
women paid by the army; in one of these establishments
in our area there were 160 Belgian peasant women
engaged in this work. Mending is also done by them,
while socks and clothes too far gone to be mended are
packed in bundles and sent away to be sold.
The waste wash water from the baths and laundries
entering the creeks naturally causes trouble from troops
down stream who may have to use it. Horses will not
touch soapy water, and the brewers object to making
beer with it; they say it spoils the beer.
Consequently the sanitary officers have in many
cases been compelled to put in tanks to treat this dirty
water and purify it. This is usually done by adding an
excess of chloride of lime, which precipitates the soap
as a curd and carries the dirt down with it. By sedi-
mentaton, and filtration through canvas, cinders and
sand, the water is clarified and turned into the creeks
again clean. So completely can this be accomplished
that the experience at one bath house is worth narrating.
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
This bath house was built on a little pond which
accumulated in winter and was not fed by springs or
any other auxiliary source of supply; consequently with
the advent of warm weather it would have dried up
unless the water had been conserved in some way.
The sanitary officer in charge was equal to the task.
With the advice of engineers and the laboratory he
built a plant which subsequently worked to perfection.
The water used to bath at least a thousand men a day,
as well as the wash water from the laundry attached
to the bath house, was collected and treated with acid
to remove the soap; the scum formed carried to the
top all of the dirt, which was then filtered off by means
of sacking, cinders, and sand. The excess of acid was
treated with lime which neutralized it, and the excess
of lime was removed by soda. The water was all filtered
before it was returned to the pond into which it flowed
just as clear as it had been before, and with enough
hardness present to give it a lather with soap.
The system was operated during the whole summer
and gave complete satisfaction. It really did what
nature would have done in a much longer time and with
a much bigger plant. Had the pond been used to bathe
in direct it would have been unfit for use in the course of
a few days, whereas by the method employed it was
always perfectly sweet and clean.
The common sense and resourcefulness of the Bri-
tish sanitary officer is well shown by this solution of
a difficult and apparently hopeless problem. It is
indeed a difficult problem which a British officer will
acknowledge to be hopeless, and it is this very British
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KEEPING THE BRITISH SOLDIER Fit
quality that the Hun should always keep in mind in
thinking of the end of the war and the reckoning after-
wards.
As far as we know there has been no plague among
the warring armies in Europe. Plague is conveyed from
rats having this disease to human beings by means of
rat fleas. These fleas become infected by biting the in-
fected rats and subsequently infect human beings by bit-
ing them. There1 are plenty of rats in the trenches and
dugouts, particularly in winter; in the summer they
breed along the water courses, and in the autumn are
attracted to the trenches where there is plenty of waste
food to be had.
Numerous devices are used to destroy them, and it
is a common thing to see a soldier sitting patiently
in the trenches with his rifle between his knees and a
piece of toasted cheese on the end of his bayonet. As
Mr. Rat, attracted by the savoury odour, approaches
and takes the first sniff, the trigger is pulled and there
is one living rat less. Prizes are sometimes given to the
man who can kill the largest number in a week, and bags
of 25 and 30 are not uncommon. Sometimes poison is
used, and even ferrets have been employed with, how-
ever, little success.
In connection with the rat problem, we had an
illustration of how impossible it is even for a rat to
escape the British army system. Army routine, the re-
sult of many years of experience, once put into opera-
tion is as sure and certain as death and taxation.
The regulations are that if any considerable num-
ber of rats have been noticed around the trenches sick
149
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
or dying, some of them shall be sent to the field labora-
tories for examination. Bubonic plague is a rat disease ;
consequently if rats are dying in any great numbers,
we would conclude that some disease, possibly plague,
must be the cause.
In this case the Director of Medical Services of
the army had been notified that a rat had been de-
spatched to a laboratory for examination. Consequently
he was anxious to know the result of the examination,
and when a report was not forthcoming he sent a tele-
gram to the officer commanding the Canadian labora-
tory asking that a report on the rat be forwarded at
once. As we had not received the rat we reported the
same to the D.M.S. who put the matter up to the
D.D.M.S. of the corps who had forwarded the rat. The,
rat had gone to another laboratory, and "the system"
to locate the rat was put into operation.
The following is the correspondence upon the sub-
ject:
1. To D.D.MS. J. Corps.
In accordance with your lw/ER/ 16of 1/2/3. a rat is
being sent from trench x.y.z. to No. 1 mobile laboratory
at .
(Signed) A.D.M.S. K.Div.
2. To O.C. No. 1 Mobile Laboratory.
Please let me know the result of your examination of
this rat.
(Signed) D.M.S. Z Army.
3. D.M.S. Z Army.
I have not received this rat.
(Signed) O.C. No. 1 Mobile Lab'y.
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KEEPING THE BRITISH SOLDIER FIT
4. To D.D.MS. J. Corps.
With reference to attached, will you please say what has
become of this rat.
(Signed) D.M.S. Z Army.
5. To D.M.S. Z Army.
It has been sent to Canadian laboratory and report has
been called for.
(Signed) D.D.M.S. J. Corps.
6. To O.C. (Canadian) Mobile Laboratory.
Will you please let me know the result of your examina-
tion of this rat.
(Signed) D.M.S. Z Army.
7. To D.MS. Z Army.
This rat was quite normal and had evidently been killed
by a blow. The report was forwarded to A. D.M.S. K.
Div.
(Signed) O.C. No. 5 (Can.) Mobile Lab.
Even a partly decomposed rat was unable to escape
the army system.
151
CHAPTER XL
k
LABORATORY WORK IN THE FIELD.
WITH the medical organization of the army in
mind it may be seen that a small mobile labora-
tory might be of great practical service to the army in
the field. Under the conditions which exist in the pre-
sent war, the army itself is not very mobile, nor is it
necessary for the laboratory to be, but it is of great im-
portance to have a car which will permit of the area
being covered quickly should a specimen, sample or
investigation be required. The car is the really essential
mobile part of the unit.
Our laboratory had charge of both the bacteri-
ological and hygiene work of a given area; it was the
only laboratory that did both types of work. When
our apparatus had been unpacked and set up in the
old ball room of the Hotel de Ville it made quite an
imposing show, and after we saw what equipment the
other laboratories had we were decidedly proud of ours.
Our first bit of work proved to be the examination
of a number of soldiers who had been in contact with
a case of cerebro-spinal meningitis, to detect "carriers"
of the specific germ. Then material of all sorts began
to come in for examination from the casualty clearing
stations, field ambulances, sanitary and medical offi-
cers, rest stations and other places. Most of the rou-
tine bacteriological work proved to be of much the same
nature as that done in a health laboratory at home, and
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LABORATORY WORK IN THE FIELD
consisted of examinations to detect some of the ordinary
communicable diseases such as diphtheria, cerebro-
spinal meningitis, typhoid fever, malaria, dysentery,
tuberculosis, and venereal diseases.
Should a case of diphtheria, for example, be found
in a soldier, all his immediate friends and companions
with whom he had been in contact, would be swabbed
to see whether they were infected. Those found to
be infected would be removed from the army at once.
In a case of suspected typhoid fever the examina-
tion of serum, blood and excreta would be necessary to
determine whether the case were really typhoid or not.
If found to be typhoid the laboratory would be called
upon to try to discover the source of the infection. The
same general methods hold good in other epidemic
diseases where the laboratory is capable of making the
diagnosis, to see whether any danger lurks in "contacts"
or "carriers" and to find the source of the infection
where possible.
Very frequently material from wounds is sent in
by the hospital surgeons to see whether wounds are in-
fected. The soil of Flanders has been liberally man-
ured for hundreds of years, and in every cubic yard of
this manured soil are millions of the germs which cause
gas gangrene and tetanus (lock-jaw) when intro-
duced beneath the skin. If a wound is infected with
gas gangrene or other dangerous organisms, the know-
ledge that they are present may materially modify the
treatment used by the surgeon, and the laboratory is
of value to him sometimes in determining that point.
The usual routine work of a hospital clinical
153
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
laboratory was also carried on by us for the casualty
clearing stations in the area, and all kinds of work
from the making of a vaccine for the treatment of
bronchitis in a British General to the inoculation of a
civilian child with anti-meningitis serum came within
our scope.
The hygiene work of the laboratory is also of a
varied character: It consists of the examination of
water supplies, milk and foods; the detection of poisons
in water, and, occasionally, in human beings ; the evol-
ving of methods to purify effluents discharged into
streams ; work on poison gases and methods used to com-
bat these, and many other things.
In each division there are some sixty water carts,
each of which holds about 110 gallons. We attempted
to get samples from all of these in turn, to see whether
the water had been disinfected. As all the sources of
water supply in Flanders, with few exceptions, contain
large numbers of bacteria, and as a properly chlorin-
ated water contains very few bacteria, it is easy to tell
from a couple of simple tests whether or not the water
in the carts has been chlorinated.
As we sometimes had eight divisions in our area
at one time, this water control meant a good deal of
work. The water carts were usually to be found at the
headquarters of the unit to which they belonged, and
we quickly discovered that the way to get the largest
number of water samples in the shortest time was to
travel by the map up and down the twisting narrow
roads which intersected each other as though following
the trails of the original inhabitants.
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LABORATORY WORK IN THE FIELD
It must be remembered that four or five miles be-
hind the front line every farm house and barn is in use
most of the time for billeting soldiers, and that these
farm houses are infinitely more numerous than they are
in America. Little villages and towns are very frequent
and many of them bear the same name as other towns
and villages a few miles apart. Thus there are at least
two Bailleuls, two Givenchys, two Neuve Eglises and
so on. In our quest of these water carts we had to search
the countryside diligently and we averaged a great
many miles a day; we soon got to know every road and
almost every farm house in our area.
When a cart was found it was necessary to get the
man in charge of it — the water detail — in order to
obtain information as to the source of supply, the
amount of chlorine used, whether there had been com-
plaints of taste and so forth. While the information
was being obtained, officers of the unit would often
come out to see what the trouble was and would ask
questions ; possibly some non-coms and men would also
gather about, and the first thing we knew would be
giving, to a very interested audience, a little lecture on
the dangers of drinking untreated water; their interest
would be greatly increased if a bottle filled with the
water, to which a couple of drops of solution had been
added, turned bright blue, thus showing the presence
of the free chlorine. By such means a good deal of
practical educational work was done, and the danger
of men drinking raw water thereby reduced.
Reports of all samples were sent to the A.D.M.S.
of the division concerned, who forwarded them to the
155
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
medical officers of the units, with more or less caustic
remarks should the samples be bad. The M.O. in turn
would get after the man in charge of the water cart,
who usually had some more or less plausible excuse.
The water details of the first Canadian Division
were the best trained lot of men we ever ran across.
The very first day we took samples from their water
carts they were all sterile, and there were no complaints
about taste. It was an excellent example of what train-
ing could accomplish, for they had all been carefully
trained in their duties in Canada and England.
As the water details of any division were constant-
ly changing, the efficiency of the treatment depended to
a great extent on the constant supervision of the pro-
blem by the A.D.M.S., medical and sanitary officers.
We have found divisions coming into our area for
the first time with only 25 per cent, of their water carts
chlorinated, whereas before they left they would have
90 per cent, or more chlorinated, and the division thor-
oughly educated as to the necessity for sterilizing their
drinking water properly.
Wells, springs, creeks, and ponds used as sources
of supply were also examined, and not infrequently
samples from "springs," encountered while digging
new trenches, were sent in to be tested. The tremendous
number of bacteria found in some of these "spring"
samples we on several occasions reported as indicating
the presence of buried animal matter in the immediate
vicinity of the springs, and resulted in finding this to
be correct. In one case in which a badly polluted water
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LABORATORY WORK IN THE FIELD
was so reported upon, the burial place of some fifty
Germans was found only a few feet away.
One suspected epidemic of dysentery was a typical-
ly water borne infection which did not prove to be the
real thing. Half of one company was in a front line
trench and half in support. Part of the one section
took their drinking water from a shallow well near at
hand without treating it, and practically every one who
drank it, thirty-one in all, came down with typical
symptoms of dysentery, while all the others who did not
drink it raw escaped. The well water was found to be
badly polluted. The sick were all quite well in four
or five days, and able to return to the front line, but it
proved to be an excellent lesson in hygiene to that Divi-
sion.
A curious phenomenon in connection with the
army water supply was noted that first spring in Flan-
ders. The flat surface of the country in our area con-
sisted of a very tenacious clay, and the farm wells were
usually sunk ten to twelve feet in that clay. In the
months of March and April, though the fields were
water logged and the ditches brimming over, the wells
which were being used by the troops were going dry.
In other words the soil was almost impervious so that
once a well had been emptied it would not fill up again
for days.
For this and several other reasons we reported the
necessity for large mobile water purification units,
which could take the water from larger bodies of water
such as ponds, creeks, canals or rivers, purify it, and de-
liver it filtered and sterilized into the water carts or
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
tanks. Such a system was subsequently adopted by the
war office and is now in general use in the British
Armies.
One hot morning in mid June we received a tele-
gram from the Surgeon General to investigate a water
supply complained of in the Festubert region. A pre-
monition seized me that I was going to be killed, for
the battery to be visited was in a very "unhealthy" spot.
So I made a new will, and wrote a letter of farewell,
to be posted in case of accident.
The battery was found nestling in the midst of an
orchard, but the M.O. who knew all about the water
supply, was not to be found. Reluctantly I accepted
from the Colonel an invitation to dinner, for the feeling
was still strong in me that some danger was impending.
Half-way through dinner there came the well-known
scream of an approaching shell, which burst at the
other end of the orchard. A second shell burst a little
closer; a third came closer still, and a fourth rained
shrapnel on the roof ; all the others, with one exception,
fell short, and the shelling was over for the time. It
was just another one of those "intuitions."
While the shells were flying we all kept on eating
as if this were a usual everyday accompaniment to
lunch, though I noticed that they watched me with as
much interest as I eyed them during the process, each
curious to know how the other took it.
The varied nature of laboratory work in the army
and its practical applications may be seen from the fol-
lowing examples: —
One day the O.C. of a hospital sent over a pint of
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LABORATORY WORK IN THE FIELD
tea suspected of poisoning 28 out of 29 men who drank
it. From the history of the affair we did not believe
that this could possibly be the cause, and after making
a few rapid tests to exclude metals, we proved that the
tea was not poisonous by the simple, practical test of
drinking it, Major Rankin being the official tester.
This method of making a practical physiological test
rather astonished the British authorities.
A German gas mask found on the battle field was
submitted to us to find what chemicals were present.
That mistakes were sometimes made by the Germans
was evident when we found that the mask had not been
treated with chemicals at all; some of the Huns at
least had been unprepared for a gas attack.
The clarifying apparatus on the British water cars
was mechanically defective and usually broke at certain
definite places. Recommendations were made by us
after we had experimented with rubber instead of rigid
connections, which resulted in all the water carts in
the British army being equipped with rubber connec-
tions, the results being entirely satisfactory.
A great deal of experimental laboratory and field
work was done with chlorine gas and the efficiency of
gas masks and helmets. Experimental physiological
and pathological work was done on animals with chlor-
ine and other gases, and on the drying out and deteriora-
tion of gas helmets and the chemicals used in them.
Subsequently a Gas Service was inaugurated and all
work of this sort carried out in special laboratories at
G.H.Q.
Quite a number of cases of nephritis occurred
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
among soldiers, and arsenic was suggested as a possible
cause. The laboratory was asked to examine a consider-
able number of samples of wine and beer to see whether
traces of arsenic were present or not. None was found.
A large quantity of wine found to be diluted with ditch
water, and sold to our soldiers, was destroyed, and the
vendors fined.
One day a young medical officer, so excited that
he could hardly speak, rushed into the laboratory with
a lot of dead fish. After some questioning we found
that there were tens of thousands of dead fish in the
Aire-La Bassee canal and, as this ran into the German
lines, he suspected that the canal water had been poi-
soned by the enemy. We told him that we thought the
fish had probably died from asphyxiation as a result of
organic matter from a starch works being emptied into
the stream. He went away unconvinced, to make a fur-
ther enquiry and returned later in the day to report
that the fish in the canal died every year in the spring
when a certain distillery dumped its waste into the
canal. Thus did former experience with starch mills
pouring their effluents into Ontario streams and kill-
ing fish prove of unexpected use.
The laboratory was used a great deal by the highly
trained officers of the Indian Medical service, who were
always wanting some unusual parasite or insect identi-
fied, and made a good deal of use of our library.
A German high explosive percussion bomb was
brought in one day for us to identify the explosive pre-
sent. We did not allow the messenger even to lay it
down but besought him to hold it tight and to keep mov-
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LABORATORY WORK IN THE FIELD
ing towards the explosives laboratory seven miles away
while we escorted him quickly and safely from the pre-
mises. The way some of those chaps handled bombs
and shells made you tired. It would have been a great
pity if that two hundred year old building had been
blown up and the British Army compelled to pay for it.
A poor soldier up and died one day without warn-
ing or preliminary sickness. They thought it might be
poison, and his wife would have been deprived of her
pension if the man had committed suicide. We were
asked to examine the stomach contents to decide
whether poison was present. No poison was found.
We were sent a little vial containing a small
amount of material and asked to determine the nature
of the contents. The bottle had been found beside a
dead German. It proved to be opium, and the owner
had evidently been prepared for a painless passage
across the Styx when such necessity arose.
Occasionally we had to investigate possible cases of
cholera among troops coming from India. One day we
received a telegram to proceed to a certain place about
ten miles away and report on the sanitary surroundings
and particularly on the water supply of a place where
an old Frenchman had died with "choleric dysentery."
We found the place after some search, and discovered
that the old man had died a month before, and that the
suspected water supply, unboiled, had been used ever
since by a certain headquarter staff without ill effects.
Needless to say that was the best proof obtainable that
the water supply was safe.
The use of raw milk was forbidden in the army,
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
and condensed milk was issued instead. Sometimes
"blown" cans of this were sent in for examination and
found to be infected with gas producing organisms.
Whenever such occurred, the report would be forward-
ed back through the system to England and the manu-
facturer would be apprised of the fact and checked
up on his methods. Canned foods of various sorts were
also brought in for examination, but nothing of a harm-
ful character ever discovered. The food supply of the
British Army, as a matter of fact, was of the highest
quality and had been subjected to rigid examination by
the Government inspectors during its preparation;
practically none of it was ever found to be bad.
Another unusual problem arose out of the fact that
several soldiers had contracted anthrax, both in Eng-
land and in France, and the shaving brushes issued
were suspected of being the cause. We undertook to
search them for anthrax spores, but found it was too
long and tedious a job for a field laboratory, for the
brushes were full of spores of all kinds. Later on in
England anthrax was actually found by other bacteri-
ologists in some of these brushes, according to reports
published.
These few examples taken at random will serve to
demonstrate the varied character of the work of a
field laboratory, and to show that a certain amount of
experience is necessary in order to handle some of the
problems affectively. We were peculiarly fortunate
in our combined experience. Major Rankin, a first
rate pathologist and bacteriologist of the government
of Alberta, had been in charge of the government la-
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LABORATORY WORK IN THE FIELD
boratory at Siam for five years previous to the war, and
knew tropical medicine like a book, while Captain Ellis
had carried on research work for three years in the
Rockefeller hospital laboratories in New York and
was thoroughly conversant with all the most recent
work in vaccine and serum therapy. Consequently there
was practically nothing that we could not tackle be-
tween the three of us, either in bacteriology, pathology,
sanitation or treatment of epidemic disease.
Wherever an action was about to occur on the front
the hospitals were evacuated of all sick and wounded in
order to obtain the maximum number of empty beds.
Consequently when fighting was going on the hospitals
were very busy but the laboratory routine greatly de-
creased except in hygienic work. We therefore under-
took scientific investigations of various kinds to keep
busy and be of the maximum use.
At the suggestion of the D.M.S. of the army,
Major Rankin made a survey of the army area for
anopheles mosquitoes. The Indian corps was in our
area at the time and he obtained the co-operation of the
officers of the Indian Medical Servce, who being parti-
cularly keen on biting insects collected many specimens
for him. This variety of mosquito transmits malaria,
and, as we were getting a few cases of malaria in troops
who had been in tropical climates, it was important
to determine accurately the varieties of mosquitoes pre-
sent, particularly since the numerous ditches, canals and
ponds of the country were ideal places for their multi-
plication. In spite of the anopheles mosquito being
found everywhere, Major Rankin reported that he did
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
not believe that there would be many new cases of
malaria, develop in France and such proved to be
the case.
Captain Ellis began an investigation into the
grouping of the various strains of "meningococci"—
the organism causing cerebro-spinal meningitis, with
the ultimate object of obtaining a more efficient anti-
serum for the treatment of this disease.
Apparatus designed to purify wash water from
baths before turning it into the streams ; designs for the
building of small chlorinating plants near the trenches,
and the construction of field incinerators for consum-
ing garbage, were constantly being referred to us for
consideration and suggestions; we thus had a variety
of sanitary work of an interesting and useful kind,
which helped to keep us busy.
The nature of our activities carried us through
the area of shell fire, among the batteries and some-
times quite close to the trenches. We were free lances
to all intents and purposes and frequently had to hunt
out new problems to work upon. In travelling about
in the course of our work we saw things more or less
from the spectator's standpoint, and there were few
things going on that escaped us.
Many sad and depressing sights were witnessed,
and one received many vivid impressions of what war
means to an invaded country, — impressions which can
only be attained by actual experience.
Accompanied by the sanitary officer of the 19th
division one morning I saw a very sad example of what
ignorance of the essentials of hygiene can bring about.
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LABORATORY WORK IN THE FIELD
Down in a swampy spot on a branch of the canal was a
little hamlet, and one of the tiny houses was occupied
by a family of refugees from La Bassee.
When we entered the house swarms of flies flew
up from the table and buzzed about while we did our
best to prevent them from settling upon us. The father
of the family was in bed unconscious, with typhoid
fever. The mother, dead from the disease, had been
buried the day before.
During the funeral the eldest daughter, a pretty
girl of sixteen, sat up in a chair trying to look after the
visitors. When we called she also was in bed delirious
with the disease in the same room as her father.
The baby in the carriage had had typhoid. A
little two year old boy was just recovering, and was
thought to have been the original case. Two other boys
of seven and nine years of age were getting some bread
and milk for their dinner, one of them being probably
a mild case ; and a girl of eleven, evidently coming down
with the disease, was going about looking after the
household.
With that swarm of disease-carrying flies in the
house there was no possibility of any of the children
escaping the infection. It was with the greatest diffi-
culty that the sanitary officer of the division succeeded
in getting the French civilian authorities to move in the
matter and remove the cases to the French civilian
hospital. The father died a week later, and the sani-
tary officer himself was subsequently killed during the
battle of the Somme.
The French refugees do not complain; they are
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
not that kind. They told their stories simply and in-
variably finished with a shrug of the shoulders and the
phrase "c'est la guerre n'est ce pas?" (That is war, is
it not?) But if the French army ever gets on German
soil I would hate to be a German.
One night we found that our first Canadian bri-
gade was going into the trenches at Festubert without
the chemical necessary to saturate their gas masks,
which had just been issued to the soldiers ; we succeed-
ed in borrowing 500 pounds from a wide-awake army
corps and took it down in the car to an advanced dress-
ing station which the brigade would have to pass. The
Germans were particularly jumpy that night as we felt
our way along that very rough road with no light to
guide us except the electric green light of the numerous
German flares, the occasional flashes of a powerful Ger-
man search light sweeping the sky and ground, and the
angry red spurts from the guns which lit up the sky like
summer lightning.
Once we had occasion to make a trip from one
shelled village to another, the driver had been given
the direction and no further attention was paid to him
until we came across a reserve trench manned by
Ghurkas. This drew our attention to the fact that the
country was quite unfamiliar. However, the next
French sign post showed us that we were on a road
leading to the desired village and we kept on.
The day was very quiet and hazy and it was im-
possible to see very far. We suddenly came upon the
remains of a little village which had been literally
levelled to the ground ; not two feet of brick wall could
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LABORATORY WORK IN THE FIELD
be seen anywhere. At the cross roads in the centre of
the village two military policemen seemed to be
surprised at our appearance with a large motor car
but said nothing, evidently thinking that we knew
our own business best, and we made the correct turn
according to the sign board and kept on. About two
hundred yards farther on we ran into a veritable maze
of trenches, barbed wire entanglements and dug-outs,
without doubt part of the front line trench system.
Needless to say we made a rapid right-about face and
speedily retraced our steps by the road we had come.
We found later on that the road we had taken did
go to the village that we wanted to visit but that it went
through the German trenches en route. At the point
where we had turned, which was only four hundred
yards from the German trenches, thirty men had been
killed by snipers during that month while getting
water at one of the wells in the neighborhood. The
haze in the atmosphere saved us from observation for
we would have been a fine target for rifles, machine guns
and even whiz bangs.
We met officers in every branch of the service, —
infantry, cavalry, artillery, flying corps, ordnance, army
service, medical, engineers, construction, water trans-
port, etc., and thereby obtained a splendid idea of what
was going on, and how the various branches of the ser-
vice worked together and viewed any given problem.
Some of these views were quite at variance with
one another. For instance the artillery man looked
upon the infantryman as the man who protected his
guns and kept off the enemy while he killed them. The
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
infantryman naturally looked upon the artillery as the
arm to support him in time of trouble and prepare the
ground while he did the dirty work. The aviator called
them all "ground soldiers" in a more or less lofty man-
ner.
The medical and other services looked upon the
fighting man as the one who gave them a great deal of
work, and they all usually forgot that they existed for
the express purpose of keeping Tommy in the trenches
clothed, fed, healthy and protected from the assaults of
the enemy; for Tommy is the man, say what you will,
without him everything else goes smash ; it is the human
being who still counts in war; it is the man power which
will win.
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CHAPTER XII.
SKETCHES FROM A LABORATORY WINDOW.
The Bandstand in the Square.
MANY interesting little affairs happened in the
Bandstand in the Grand Place beneath our labora-
tory windows. One Sunday evening in June a khaki-
clad figure ascended a pulpit which had been impro-
vised there; the seats in front of him were filled with
rows of generals, colonels and other officers. In a rich,
stentorian voice he gave out the lines of a verse, and led
by a cornet, the strains of the grand old hymn "O God
our help in ages past" swelled on the summer evening
air, sung as only soldiers can sing.
The crowd of soldiers about the bandstand grew,
and little French children playing about in their best
Sunday clothes, stopped in curious wonderment to hear
"Les Anglais" sing. A few of their elders strolled
over and even though they could not understand, they
listened attentively.
Our thoughts flew thousands of miles over the
ocean to other Sunday evening services at our home in
Canada. We could see the old family pew; we could
hear father and mother and the old friends singing that
same old hymn, while our youthful minds were likely
busied with recollections of a lacrosse match or baseball
game that we had seen the day before, or maybe of a
visit to the old dam where we had had the finest swim
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
of the season. We could see women attired in spotless
white, and men in frock coats and silk hats, walking
sedately to church, and we longed with an intense long-
ing for one more such Sunday in the old home town.
It seemed ages since we had been there; we wondered
whether we would ever visit the old scenes again, and
we had a premonition that we never would. The theme
of the brief sermon was the old, old story of Christ's
coming to save sinners, and the guns boomed and a
belated aeroplane overhead buzzed homeward while
the speaker appealed earnestly to his hearers to serve
Christ by following his example in true living even as
they were now, by offering their lives, serving humanity.
General Haig presents medals.
One summer evening, after the battle of Aubers
Ridge a number of junior officers and private soldiers,
including Indians, began to gather about the band-
stand. As ten o'clock approached, motor after motor
drew up, numerous staff officers descended and formed
themselves into groups. There was much saluting and
hand-shaking, the saluting being done by the junior offi-
cers and men, and the hand-shaking taking place among
the seniors.
Although furniture was none too plentiful a table
which was secured somewhere, was placed about six
paces in front of the grandstand steps. A cloth was
placed upon the table, and two officers began spreading
on it in orderly array various small boxes. A list was
produced, names were compared and carefully checked.
The officers and men who were to receive decorations
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SKETCHES FROM LABORATORY WINDOW
were then paraded, and as the roll was called each man
took his place in order in the line. The list was again
checked over, and compared with the boxes on the table.
At 10.20 a big car drove up and a figure stepped
out — a figure known to the whole world — Sir Douglas
Haig. Well groomed, handsome, quick of his move-
ment, he looked as he was, every inch a soldier. As
he approached the groups everyone stood to attention;
the senior officer gave the salute, and the General
acknowledged it.
After a few words with the officers in charge, Gen-
eral Haig took his place behind the table and made a
short speech, after which the soldiers were called up
one by one while he pinned on their medals or decora-
tions. Each soldier saluted as stepped forward, and
as he stepped back to his place he saluted again in
acknowledgment of the remarks of the General.
There was no fuss, no feathers ; the affair was typi-
cally British. Such decorations as the Legion
d'Honeur and Croix de Guerre, had to be presented,
and they were, after which everybody shook hands and
went away. It was all very simple. In serving your
country you risk your life, and incidentally you may get
a decoration for bravery. Why make a fuss about it?
An Old Flanders Hotel.
There are many kinds of hotels in the little towns
and villages of northern France, some good and some
bad ; — mostly good if you only want bread, cheese and
beer, and very bad if you want anything else. Still,
you do occasionally run across an hotel which is capable
171
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
of providing a decent meal, though the rooms and gen-
eral accommodation are, as a rule, exceedingly poor.
Heat is a thing unknown. If you raise a row and de-
mand a fire, they will provide it for sundry francs and
centimes extra. In war time coal becomes more and
more difficult to obtain, and the inveigling of a fire out
of mine host becomes increasingly difficult.
The M Hotel was rather a pretentious hos-
telry. It occupied part of the City Hall or Hotel de
Ville which faced the Grande Place. The Hotel de
Ville is a rather good looking red brick building, three
stones high, and is said to be over 200 years old. In
the centre an arch way, protected by heavy iron gates,
leads into an inner court, occupied chiefly by stables.
To the right is the entrance to the police magistrate's
office and court, and to the left is the entrance to our
Hostelry.
A typical old Frenchman, with a snow-white
drooping moustache and closely cropped white hair,
runs the hotel with the aid of his rosy cheeked daughter
and a couple of maids. The old man spends his time
in dispensing wine and beer, looking after the maids,
occasionally cooking a meal for a particular guest, buy-
ing the food, and playing billiards with the little groups
of old cronies that foregather in the common room each
evening. Like all Frenchmen, he had been a soldier
in his time, and had never forgiven the Germans for
1870. His picture as a young man in uniform, hung
in the dining-room of the hotel.
Moreover, he was a musician, and before the war
had played the French horn in the town band. His
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SKETCHES FROM LABORATORY WINDOW
banquet hall, which we were now using as a laboratory,
had been the band room and the home of all band prac-
tices in the long winter months. How the old man
did roll his eyes with ecstacy and raise his hands with
unutterable joy as he listened for the first time to the
wonderful mellow music of the British Grenadier
Guards' band as it played in the bandstand in the square.
Handel's largo, the overture to Tannhauser, and a fan-
tasia on British airs, — each brought forth a different
series of gestures. "Monsieur, I have not heard such fine
music since I heard the Republican Guards' band at
Paris; in fact, monsieur, this is finer — the tone is richer,
rounder and more mellow. It is marvellous, Monsieur
le Colonel, marvellous; it is entrancing; a-ha! heaven-
ly!"
M— - Hotel in the evening was an interesting
sight. Little tables were spread about upon the sawdust
sprinkled floor, each table with two or four guests dis-
cussing the official communiques of the day, the flow of
talk assisted by a bottle of red or white wine. M. X.,
the miller, at heart more or less of a pessimist invari-
ably got into an argument with that fierce optimist,
M. Y., the lumberman. Night after night they would
argue as to the progress of the war; whether Germany
was really short of food; whether there were really
three million men in "Keetchenaire's" army; whether
the country was infested with spies ; or why Von Kluck's
army turned back from Paris.
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
An Indian Concert.
Towards four o'clock, one afternoon, we noticed
an unusual clearing up of the village square. Mili-
tary policemen were ordering away motor cars, wagons,
and lorries, while everything in the square was made
spick and span. About four-thirty, Sikhs, Beloochis,
Pathans, and Ghurkas began to stroll into the square
and congregate in goups, shaking hands with acquain-
tances they had not met for some time, just like typical
Frenchmen. Those who came later carried drums and
bagpipes of the regulation kind. At five minutes to
five the bandmaster made his appearance, and the band
lined up while they tuned their chanters.
Sharp at five o'clock, with a punctuality that was
remarkable, the band stepped out across the square to
the tune of "The Cock of the North," played in perfect
time and tune. At the far side of the square they
wheeled about and back they came with ribbons flying
and chests inflated, looking like real natives of the Scot-
tish hills. It was the most perfect pipe playing I had
ever heard. The French were delighted. As the
strains died away in the wail of the chanters, a hearty
round of applause brought smiles to the serious faces
of the Indians, and away they went again to "Highland
Laddie," followed by "The Campbells are Coming."
Then another band followed with performance on
the Indian pipe which is something like a chanter, with-
out the bag or drones. The effect was awful. To make
a hit they attempted "La Marseillaise," and it was a
hit. Had it been a farce it could not have been beaten
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SKETCHES FROM LABORATORY WINDOW
— no two instruments were in tune and some of the
notes of the scale were altogether missing, so that the
most ghastly discords were sprung upon us. No wonder
such instruments can lash the hillsmen into fury. They
had us nearly fighting mad.
To hint that we were not entranced with their
efforts, we clapped but faintly — but the musicians took
it as hearty applause, and burst forth with fearful
onslaught upon "Rule Britannia." When they were
through you could have heard a pin fall. Not a soul
risked a sound lest the players should mistake it as an
invitation to renew their entertainment; so the real pipe
band came on for another whirl and we were made
happy once more.
Precisely at five-thirty, the concert ended, and the
cosmopolitan crowd of French civilians and soldiers,
British Tommies, Indians, Highlanders, and Cana-
dians, melted away. Five minutes after, save for the
presence of a few blue rock pigeons flitting about in
search of their evening meal, the square showed no sign
of life.
The Jail.
The town jail and dungeon is in the Hotel de
Ville. Heavy barred doors open into a little dimly-lit
store room, with windows high up protected by iron
bars. Through this room a small doorway leads to a
dungeon without light of any sort. We always knew
when this prison had an occupant — in the morning a
fatigue party under a corporal would appear marching
across the square carrying food rations. The corporal
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
would halt his men, step forward and give the signal
on the door; it would be opened by the sentry guard-
ing the inner cell. The food was then conveyed to the
prisoner, the fatigue party marched away, and the sen-
try with rifle on shoulder paced up and down the front
of the jail until his relief arrived. At no time was the
guard off duty for a moment until the prisoner, perhaps
under sentence of death, had been removed.
Once we had to report on a swab from a prisoner
under the death sentence. Military law says that no
man can be shot while suffering from any disease in
hospital. Conseqently when this man was found to
have a suspiciously sore throat, it was reported by the
Medical Officer and there was great excitement. Tele-
grams flew back and forth about the matter while I
had to stay up till midnight to obtain a good culture.
The culture, much to the relief of the staff officer who
was waiting for the report, did not show diphtheria
bacilli, and at five o'clock the following morning the
poor chap met his fate.
A Canadian Graveyard.
The road to Bethune was always of interest to us,
because near the pretty little village of Hinges was a
hill; in fact Hinges was right on the top of this hill—
our area, elsewhere, was as flat as a board. Hinges
was interesting because it was full of trees and hedges
and gardens, and somehow reminded one of the beau-
tiful little sequestered villages of England, rather than a
French village.
On the far side of the village, where the hill de-
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SKETCHES FROM LABORATORY WINDOW
scending swept away off towards Bethune, a fine big
French chateau nestled in the midst of a huge park of
enormous trees. From the chateau a sweeping view
of the surrounding country was obtained. Not more
than two miles below it, on the La Bassee Canal, could
be seen the spires and towers of the real little city of
Bethune. Away beyond Bethune one could see the blue
hills in which the Germans were strongly entrenched.
To the right among these hills projected three sharp-
pointed, pyramidal hills, indicating the location of the
dumps of French coal mines, then operated by the
Germans.
For a time during the battles of Givenchey, one of
our field ambulances had been located in the spacious
shady grounds of the chateau. A little graveyard near
the main gateway, on the roadside, is the last sleeping
place of a number of Canadians who died in this ambu-
lance. To-day a neat fence surrounds this little area of
Canadian soil and the graves are kept trim and covered
with flowers. Even before the authorities took any
action I saw the French country people themselves
decorating the little mounds beneath which lay "Les
Canadiens" who had come so far "to fight for France"
in this struggle for the freedom of the world.
It is a beautiful little sleeping-place, and somehow
it never seemed to me so sad a spot as some of the other
graveyards in France where our Canadians lie. As
the roar of the British guns increase as the months go
by, and the number of shells carrying death and destruc-
tion to the Germans, multiplies — one can imagine that
the spirits of those who lie below are watching the
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
enemy lines being pressed back towards Berlin, and that
they will understand that their sacrifice has not been
in vain.
And, one night as I passed the spot, during the
battle of Loos, when the sky flickered red as from
summer lightning with the flash of myriads of shells,
and the horizon was defined in electric green from the
flares of the Germans, I fancied that I could see the
shadowy spirits of the departed ones hovering over this
spot before their final departure, and I felt that they
must realize that the work of our army in it's struggle
for the freedom of the world was being carried on with
increasing efficiency.
Indissoluble ties now bind France to Canada: her
soil has been watered with our very best blood and the
bond of a common suffering in a righteous cause has
united us forever.
A Hot Day in the Field.
One hot day in early June I made a tour of the —
divisional area with the sanitary officer. We had been
asked to go over this area, and make suggestions for
the improvement of its sanitary condition. It was the
only time during two summers spent in France that I
felt I was really in the "sunny France" of my imagina-
tion. The sun beat down on the floor of our open car
so that when one stopped for a minute it became a
veritable little red hot radiator. So long as we kept
moving, the breeze created made it bearable; but when
we left the car for a minute the seats become too hot
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to sit on, and the perspiration fairly streamed down
our faces.
The air rising from the fields and roads vibrated
like that over a hot stove; the dust raised by motors
hung suspended for long minutes in the motionless air,
and filled one's nose and mouth. The chickens in the
farmyards stood with beaks wide open gasping for
air.
Even military form was relaxed on account of the
heat, and lorry drivers, men on transports, and troops
marched and worked with their coats off. All the water
ditches near the front were filled with soldiers bathing
themselves. It is extraordinary how war conditions
will break down conventions. Many times that day I
saw absolutely nude men bathing in a roadside ditch, and
women passing only a few yards away, neither of them
being at all concerned about the others. Sections of
the Aire-La-Bassee canal looked like the "old swim-
ming pool" in midsummer. Hundreds of soldiers
dived, swam, and rolled about in the dirty waters.
Finely built, rosy-skinned chaps they were too, playing
about like care-free boys, with aeroplanes buzzing by
overhead, and shells exploding in a village to the rear.
After a busy morning making our inspection and
taking water samples for examination, we dined at the
divisional Mess B and set out again to complete our
tour. We visited the various filling points of water
carts and gradually drew nearer the front line trenches.
Turning down one arm of "the tuning fork" — a forked
road near Festubert, we came upon an advanced dress-
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
ing-station. A little to our left was a grey pile of bricks
and rubble, all that remained of the village of Festubert.
The medical officer of the dressing-station told me
that only ten minutes before the enemy had been shell-
ing the spot about a quarter of a mile farther on, which
was our next point of inspection.
"What do you think? Shall we go?" asked the
sanitary officer.
"I leave it to you," I said, and we proceeded.
As we approached our destination I picked up the
next numbered bottle. It was number 13. A curious
sensation passed over me and I put the bottle back,
taking up number 14. "Why don't you live up to your
disbelief in superstitions," I said to myself and I put
bottle number 14 back. When we arrived at the place
I took up number 13, got the water sample while the
car was being turned and "beat it." Of course nothing
happened and we finished our trip at 5 p.m. after a
60-mile tour through the area occupied by as fine a
Scotch division as Scotland ever produced.
There are compensations for almost everything in
life if you can discover them: I never enjoyed a bath
more in my life than the one I had when I reached home
that night, sticky and dusty and hot, with the aid of a
sponge and half a gallon of water. (Baths are rare in
French houses.)
The Fire Fete.
Merville is a staunch compact little town with a
big church whose lofty byzantine, rounded dome
projected high into the air forms a landmark that can
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SKETCHES FROM LABORATORY WINDOW
be seen for miles. We have been able to pick up this
tower quite easily from a point in Belgium fourteen
miles away — a point from which we were actually
watching the bombardment of our lines at St. Eloi on
the 10th of June 1916. The church is a very large one
for a town of the size, but as the people are very good
Catholics in that district, it was in constant use from
early morning to late at night. Funerals passed to and
from it daily and the chants of the resonant-voiced
priests became such a frequent thing that we ceased to
pay any attenton to them. Funerals in France are a
most terribly depressing sort of thing, anyway.
One Sunday there was evidence of something un-
usual on hand. A stage twenty feet across had been
erected against the wall of the Hotel de Ville, facing
the square and approached by a flight of a dozen steps.
During the course of the morning it was covered with
green boughs and flowers, a cross was erected on the top
while various coloured banners and the tricolors helped
to make a very effective and pretty stage.
Meanwhile around the church square there was
great excitement. Girls of all ages in white, and boys
with short white trousers, blue coats and tam-o-shanters
had been going towards the church since early morning.
From our laboratory window we could see these young-
sters being collected into groups and being instructed by
nuns. Banners of various kinds floated in the air and
hung from the windows of the houses round about.
We had settled into our daily work when the sound
of children's voices floated through the laboratory win-
dows, and we looked out to see a procession coming
181
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
across the Grande Place, led by an old man carrying a
gilded staff and wearing a cocked hat. Right behind
him walked a priest between two altar boys, all three
wearing elaborately worked tunics of lace; the boys
carried poles with lanterns on the top.
Following them came, two and two, the smaller
boys of the village. Then came a band of tiny boys
carrying wooden guns over their shoulders and dressed
as Turcos ; large groups of bigger boys followed dressed
in white trousers, blue coats and tam-o-shanter hats,
and headed by a bugle band.
These were succeeded by a number of girls dressed
entirely in white, the smaller ones being in front and
the larger ones behind. Then came the really beauti-
ful part of the procession. In this section every girl
was dressed differently, each dress being of some period
in the history of Flanders. As a study in costume alone
it was exceedingly fine.
Some of the dresses were quite beautiful. One had
a blue-laced bodice over white and a red velvet skirt
with a high pointed black straw hat; another had a
black bodice with a white under vest and a blue skirt,
the hat being of white lace. Others which I cannot now
remember in exact detail were very interesting and re-
called all the historical tales that I had ever read of
ancient Flanders.
Next came a canopy supported by two of the older
men but with choir boys on the four guy ropes. Under
it walked the priest who was to be the master of cere-
monies for the day. Then came other girls in white,
depicting various characters in French history, such as
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SKETCHES FROM LABORATORY WINDOW
Joan of Arc. The prettiest girl of the village was the
one chosen to be the angel, she wore a large pair of
wings and was dressed in a white filmy material which
made her quite realistic according to the commonly
accepted ideas of angels. After these walked the older
girls and women of the village according to their age,
the tottering old grandmothers coming last. Finally
came the men in the order of their age.
By this time the procession had doubled backward
and forward on itself as it gradually approached the
altar under our windows. The officiating priest, which
on this occasion happened to be the clergyman from
our own hospital, slowly mounted the steps of the stage
as the chant swelled into greater volume, and the whole
crowd went down upon its knees in prayer. After cer-
tain offices had been performed by the priest at the altar
he descended and the procession dispersed.
Such was the interesting "Fete de Feu" of Mer-
ville. We were told on the very highest authority that
at one time over two hundred years ago, the town caught
fire and that nothing could be done to save it. In this
dire extremity the parish priest prayed to God and
promised him that if he would save the village the town
would each year for all time have a memorial proces-
sion of thanksgiving; immediately the fire went out and
the thankful villagers and their descendants have since
that time never failed to keep the sacred promise then
made.
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To ban's Pup.
Private Toban, contrary to army orders, owned a
dog. It was a nondescript pup, with a cross eye, and
also a kink in his tail. It was coloured a sort of battle-
ship grey with two or three splashes of brown on the
flanks, and his nearest blood relative was probably a
French poodle — though his ancestry was a subject of
prolonged and sometimes heated debate between Toban
and his mates. A Tommy who had scornfully described
him as "A 'ell of a lookin' dawg" had been promptly
felled by a blow from Toban's right.
Before the second battle of Ypres, when the divi-
sion was in training, the Canadians did a good deal
of route marching. Toban used to take the pup along
with him and the pup used to become tired. Then
Toban would pick him up and carry him. Finally
the medical officer noticed his fondness for the dog and
would, on occasion, take the pup in front of him on the
saddle.
Once the battalion was going into action and the
M.O. was busy at his regimental aid post, making pre-
parations for a rush, when Toban came in. "Say, Doc-
tor," he explained, "I can't take the pup with me and I
tied him to a tree down the road."
"I will look after him" promised the M.O. and
Toban disappeared.
"Here Corporal, find that dog, and label him with
Pte. Toban's number and company," ordered the M.O.
In a couple of minutes the Corporal returned.
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SKETCHES FROM LABORATORY WINDOW
"Say Captain," he reported, "I found the pup
wrapped up in Toban's blanket and tied to a tree."
The rush began and the doctor forgot all about the
dog until an hour later, when Toban, spitting teeth and
blood, stumbled into the room with a bullet through his
jaw.
"Oh, say Toban," called the M.O., "I found your
dog, and he's all right."
When Toban's face was bound up the M.O. asked,
"Do you think you can make the field ambulance by
the bridge?" Toban nodded and started off.
A minute later he thrust his head into the room —
the pup was in his arms, still wrapped in the blanket—
and spluttering gratefully through the dressings, "I got
'im, Doc, good-bye," away went Private Toban en route
to Blighty.
The Incorrigible.
Private Saunders of the — th Canadian battalion
was a hopeless alcoholic. In England he had become
such an incorrigible that the regimental officers decided
to get rid of the man. Major M — hearing the case
being discussed by some fellow officers, said, "Let me
have a try at him" and with relief they agreed to his
transfer to the Nth.
In due time the battalion went to France, and like
all others in the first division, took part in the second
battle of Ypres. During one of the attacks Major M.
was shot through the chest, and left on the field as his
battalion was slowly forced back. Saunders learned
that the Major — the one man who had treated him
185
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
like a human being, was somewhere out in front. Under
cover of night he left the trench and crawling on his
hands and knees searched about for hours amid a hail
of bullets and shrapnel, till he found the Major.
"You can't carry me, Saunders, leave me and go
back," commanded the Major.
"Now look here," said Saunders, "you have al-
ways been my boss and I've done what you told me,
now it's my turn; you do as I tell you," and getting the
Major on his back he carried him 200 yards to the shel-
ter of a ditch. Then obtaining assistance he went out
and succeeded in having the Major conveyed to a dress-
ing-station.
Again taking his place with his battalion,
Saunders went into another attack the same night,
and had his head blown off. Here was a case
where, as far as the officer was concerned, kindness had
its own reward; and here again was a case of an appar-
ently useless man, when his hour had struck, arising
to the supreme heights of self-sacrifice.
Dirty Jock.
You can't always tell the real worth of any man
to the army. Some men, who are efficient and valuable,
in times of quiet, are not able to stand up in the gruel-
ling of a battle; while other men, ordinarily useless and
difficult to handle, will develop wonderful initiative, re-
sourcefulness, and daring under stress or emergency.
The quality of heroism may be surrounded by the most
unlikely exterior — but at the supreme moment the
186
SKETCHES FROM LABORATORY WINDOW
hero in every man will come out and he may surprise
us by rising to undreamed heights of self-sacrifice.
Jock Smith was a nuisance to the whole regiment;
he was a constant reproach to the Colonel, the Medical
officer and everybody else. The very day his regiment
landed in England he got gloriously drunk and it was
only by the simple but very certain method of prodding
him with the point of a bayonet in the immediate rear
that he was kept from falling out of the ranks and going
to sleep on the roadside.
"I didna know ye were gaun ta march the nicht oor
I wudna hae got drunk," he apologized. — So it was
always. Smith was dirty. Smith was troublesome.
Smith, in short, could have well been done without.
So dirty did he become, in fact, and so verminous, that
his medical officer ordered that he be given a bath ; and
the order was carried out by a squad of four husky
Tommies with a considerable amount of enthusiasm on
the part of the squad and a tremendous amount of pro-
fanity on the part of Smith.
One bright day "a show was pulled off." Like the
rest of the battalion, Smith was in it. As they went
over the parapet with the cheer that the Germans have
learned to know and dread, Smith was well up in the
van. He did his part with an enthusiasm that was a
credit to his brigade. An officer passing through a cap-
tured trench found Smith in a quandary with three
prisoners backed up against the wall. "Come along"
cried the officer, "leave those men for somebody else."
An hour later Jock walked into the dressing station
wounded. "Well, what is the matter with you?" said
187
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
the M.O., looking up from his work of bandaging the
wounded. "I think am hit, Doctor," he answered, and
he was, for a great chunk of flesh had actually been
blown out of his thigh.
About that time the officer of the trench episode
came in with a couple of bullet wounds. Catching
sight of Smith he said, "Hello Smith! Where did you
leave those prisoners?" "Dinna ye ask foolish ques-
tions," was the reply, and nothing more could be got
from Jock.
Smith submitted to the surgical dressing without
a murmur, and was laid out on a stretcher to await the
ambulance. Finally it came.
"Here, take Smith," ordered the M.O.
uNo, never mind me, Doctor," said Smith, ujist
tak the ither men, I'll be walking."
"Do as you are told," commanded the M.O.
"Now Doctor, jist pit the ither boys in; they're
worse nor me, I'll walk."
"Damn your eyes," snapped the Doctor, "don't be
a fool ; get in there," and in spite of his earnest protests
Smith was hoisted into the ambulance to leave the fir-
ing line for all time.
188
CHAPTER XIII.
PARIS IN WAR TIME.
EARLY in March, 1916, a telegram arrived ap-
pointing me representative of Canada on the War
Allies' Sanitary Commission. This Commission, which
had been formed for the purpose of mutual assistance
and co-operation in matters of hygiene and sanitation,
was to meet in Paris in the middle of March. It was a
splendid opportunity to meet some of the great medi-
cal men and scientists of the Allies, and during the few
days before the congress met I gathered together all
the data that I thought might be of use, as well as plans
and photographs.
It was a bright spring day when I left by motor for
Paris via Amiens. We stopped at Merville to call upon
my old French friends whom I had not seen since my
leave in Canada, and distributed a number of presents
which had been sent to them from home by my family.
They were greatly pleased at having been remembered
by their Canadian friends, for the French have a real
regard for us.
As we bowled along over hill and valley, through
the sector occupied by the British Army, freed of all
responsibilities, we felt as though we were off for a
holiday. The area as far as Amiens had recently been
taken over by the British and we were surprised to find
that there were no British troops in that town excepting
a few officers. It had, for good and sufficient reasons,
189
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
been placed "out of bounds." Amiens was a real city,
the first that we had seen in the north of France; it had
wide paved streets, broad boulevards, double street car
lines, electric lighting and all the things that go to make
up a modern city in any country.
The road from Amiens to Beuvais led away from
the front and all evidences of military operations dis-
appeared. The country in that region was rolling,
well tilled and well wooded. Numerous quaint little
villages, each one different in character from the other,
nestled in the shelter of the valleys. At one place we
stopped to pick the mistletoe from a row of apple trees
that were simply covered with the green parasite ; while
we watched, away to the west, a gorgeous sunset flame
and die. It was the finishing touch to a day that had
been almost perfect, and we tumbled into bed at the
Hotel de TAngleterre in the ancient city of Beuvais to
sleep the sound sleep induced by fresh air and sunshine
in those who have not been accustomed to it.
Next morning at ten o'clock we set out for Paris,
and, crossing the Oise at the point where the British
had blown up the bridge during their retreat from
Mons, reached the gate of St. Denis in the walls of Paris
at noon. Although every pedestrian and wagon driver
was being stopped and made to show passes we were
asked no questions.
Paris seemed cleaner than ever in the spring sun-
shine and I was more than ever captivated by the
beauty of her buildings. The street market of St. Denis
was thronged with women and had a fair sprinking of
bearded French soldiers. Even at that early date quite
190
PARIS IN WAR TIME
a number of men were seen hobbling about in civilian
clothes with service medals on their coats. We saw
many Belgian soldiers but British soldiers were entirely
absent, for Paris, too, was "out of bounds" to the British
army. The very few men of military age seen was re-
markable compared with London, and though the great
battle of the war, Verdun, was then at its very height
not sixty miles away, Paris, as far as we could judge,
was not at all worried.
At night the city was brightly illuminated till nine
o'clock; then the lights were lowered. Even at mid-
night the streets were light enough to see to get about.
Paris had little fear of Zeppelins; they had made
several attempts to reach the city but had failed in all
exept one raid. The establishment of listening posts
and other devices near the front for detecting the ap-
proach of the airships made it a simple matter to pre-
pare plans to intercept them and give them a warm
reception, for it takes a fairly long time for a Zeppelin
to reach Paris after it enters French territory. A few
weeks before our arrival French anti-air-craft guns and
search-lights mounted on motor lorries had pursued
and brought down a Zeppelin and the Huns had pro-
bably decided that the game was not worth the candle.
Paris, therefore, freed from worry from this
source, went its usual way at night and crowds thronged
the Montmartre district, the quarter inhabited by the
student and demi-monde class. Most of the theatres
were in that quarter, and, although the majority of the
regular playhouses were closed, the picture shows and
191
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
music halls, such as the "Folies Bergeres" were crowded
nightly.
There were two performances a week in the Grand
Opera House, consisting of acts from different operas.
The "Comedie Francaise" the Government endowed
theatre, still gave performances at regular intervals,
which in perfection of acting were, as always, un-
equalled anywhere in the world.
The Opera Comique also gave grand opera on Sun-
day afternoons, and the one performance that I was
fortunate enough to see — Carmen — was the most per-
fect production of grand opera that I have ever seen or
heard. From the standpoint of the critic I could find
no flaw, and though Carmen is not a favorite of mine,
I revelled in the perfection of staging, acting and sing-
ing of this performance. The street and mob scenes
were so realistic that one forgot that they were not real
street scenes ; the acting of the singers was so fine that
one was carried away by it and forgot all about the
wooden acting of grand opera customary in America
and England ; and it was only when the curtain finally
rang down that one realized that the flawless perfor-
mance had been but a play.
The restaurants on the Rue des Italiens, near the
Place de L'Opera in the Montmartre district were
thronged with people. The weather was warm enough
for the crowds to sit at the tables under the awnings
in front of cafes and sip their wine or coffee, and there
I spent many a half hour after my evening lesson in
French, watching the crowds surging up and down the
broad sidewalk.
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PARIS IN WAR TIME
Men were scarce in Paris, particularly men of mili-
tary age. A few "Poilus" home on leave, and a number
of Belgians, with a sprinking of other soldiers, were
the only evidences of war. The men seen were practic-
ally all over the military age. It was the golden age
for the "has been"; the old man had again come into
his own.
The girl of the demi-mondaine was having a hard
time of it in Paris. There was no travelling public
such as usually thronged Paris in search of pleasure
and excitement and upon which she had been accus-
tomed to batten. She was therefore forced to take up
with an older and often inferior class of men which she
would have scorned in times of peace.
Rumour said that many of these women were starv-
ing, and judging by the voracious manner in which they
tackled pedestrians openly on the streets at night there
was ample ground for that belief. Men were followed
and grabbed by the arm who had no intention or desire
to make or receive any overtures.
It was so different to what one had heard of the
French women of the street that it came as a great reve-
lation of how the times were out of joint, and how diffi-
cult it really must have been for such people to obtain
the money necessary to live. One would have expected
cruder things in London but such was not the case,
though there is this difference that solicitation is not
permitted on the streets of London while it is in Paris.
Official Paris allows the people within its gates to
do as they like in matters of morals without let or hin-
drance. And so the "Petite Parisienne" whose man
193
14
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
had gone to the war and perhaps had been killed, took
to the streets again in search of another, and was forced
to take up with men she would have despised in other
times.
English speaking people have no idea of the
Parisian viewpoint on questions of morality; in fact
our view points are so diametrically opposed to one
another that we have no common ground for discussion.
The average Parisienne of the street is not immoral ; she
is unmoral, that is to say she has no morals because she
never did have any. She has been accustomed to look
upon herself as a commodity of barter and trade and we
cannot in fairness judge her as we judge women who
have been brought up to other ideals.
As I sat sipping my coffee one evening one of these
women leaned across the aisle and entered into conver-
sation. As she rattled away a poorly-clad child selling
bunches of violets approached and looking at me placed
a bouquet on the table beside me. Mechanically I put
my hand into my pocket for a penny, but by the time
I had found it to my surprise the child had passed on.
The woman stared at me and at the retreating child and
asked, "What did she do that for?"
"Perhaps because I smiled at her," I said.
The woman asked no more questions but got up and
walked away; the child's action had touched her as it
had touched me and I like to remember that on four
different occasions little French children, strangers to
me had given me in this same sweet way flowers that
they might have sold.
The English soldier was popular in Paris. Be-
194
PARIS IN WAR TIME
fore the city had been put out of bounds for the British
Army it had been a favorite resort of men and officers,
who had made a great reputation with the Parisians for
being courteous, kind and liberal. The Belgians on the
other hand were quite unpopular, being openly called
"dirty Belgians" and, judging from my own personal
observation, there was a certain amount of reason for
this disrespect.
Towards nine o'clock, when the lights were low-
ered, the genuine Parisian who had been dining in the
cafes began to go home, as did the successful women
and their consorts, causing the crowds to become per-
ceptibly thinner. Those women who had not been suc-
cessful, redoubled their efforts, and it was really pathe-
tic to see the attempts of some of these poor outcasts
who were little more than children, to capture their
prey.
At midnight the Place de L'Opera was absolutely
deserted. On two occasions I watched this strange fas-
cinating panorama of human life and emotion, forget-
ful of the time, and found myself quite alone there as
the clock struck the midnight hour. Alone I watched
the moonlight streaming down upon the Grand Opera
house transforming it into the purest marble.
I wondered whether it was all a dream. Could
it be really true that I was there in Paris in the middle
of the great war? Was it possible that the greatest
battle of all time was taking place at the very moment
not sixty miles away? Yet it was a real "Bon soir"
that a passing gendarme gave me as I strolled home-
ward past the great bronze shaft erected by Napoleon
195
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
in the Place Vendome and now towering black in the
white moonlight, while the river Seine shimmered like
molten silver in its way to the sea. It was really true
but it was one of those times when a soldier in Europe
finds it very difficult to accommodate himself to the vio-
lent contrasts which he is constantly meeting, when
transferred suddenly from the war zone back into the
peaceful life of the civilian.
The quiet and dignified Hotel Lotti on the Place
Vendome was described in the guide books as frequented
by the French nobility and the aristocracy; the claim
proved to be correct for when I was there two French
countesses, an English knight and a Duke had apart-
ments there. The Hotel Lotti is next door to the Hotel
Continental and is owned by the former manager of that
Hotel. Both the Hotel Continental and the Meurice
across the road are supposed to be particularly fine and
"splashy."
Shortly after we came, the Prince of Serbia arrived
in Paris and stayed at the Hotel Continental. At the
same time representatives of all the allied governments
arrived and stayed at one or other of these hotels. There
was a guard of Serbian soldiers always at the entrance
to the Continental as well as a crowd of onlookers which
sometimes swelled to tremendous proportions. The
newspapers chronicled the movements of the Serbian
prince and when it was announced that he was to leave
the hotel the traffic on the street was blocked with
cheering crowds.
If I heard the Marseillaise sung once I heard it
sung twenty times by the throng on the street below my
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PARIS IN WAR TIME
windows, for the Prince of Serbia was the symbol to
France of that brave people whose valour had won
for themselves immortal renown and had captured the
imagination of the French people. The French are
certainly a nation of hero worshippers and though they
no longer recognize an official nobility they do dearly
love a title.
The same kind of demonstrations took place when
Lord Kitchener and Asquith drove through the streets.
Everywhere they went the roads were lined with the
dark blue uniforms of the national guard, the gen-
darmes and some of the territorials in their light blue
service dress.
Then French soldiers lining the route across the
Place de la Concorde on the day when we drew up to
see Lord Kitchener, Mr. Asquith, General Cadorna of
Italy and other foreign representatives pass, looked
small and insignificant in their, to us, sloppy uniforms;
yet those were of the race "who had threshed the men
and kissed the women of all Europe" — the soldier,
which through all the centuries since the time of
Julius Caesar, had shown the most consistent fighting
ability of any nation in Europe. Their soldiers at
that very moment were fighting for their very exis-
tence and week after week were pouring out their best
blood in torrents on the battlefield of Verdun, demon-
strating to the world the possession of qualities which
we had prided ourselves belonged to the Teutonic races
and particularly to Britons, — the quality of "sticking
it."
They are a wonderful people, the French, marvel-
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
lous in their spirit of self sacrifice. The French woman
does not weep when her son or husband goes to war.
No, he goes to serve "La Patrie" that word for which
we have no synonym, the something which is greater
than everything else, for which all must be sacrificed
with joy. France is a name to conjure with; it is an
ideal as well as a country, for it embodies all that
Frenchmen have fought and died for in all the cen-
turies.
Paris had never before seemed half so clean, but
this is the impression that you always get when you
return to it. Perhaps it was the contrast with the filthy,
muddy streets of the little northern villages in the war
zone, — streets traversed daily by hundreds of motor
lorries and thousands of men each of whom brings in,
from the surrounding country, a certain amount of dirt.
On Sunday morning towards eleven o'clock the
great avenue — Le Bois — leading towards St. Cloud, was
crowded with the better class of Parisians, all wending
their way to the woods and parks for the day. They
were there in tens of thousands, on foot and in taxis, and
very frequently carrying lunch baskets.
Never does one see such a smartly dressed crowd of
women as one sees in Paris. No matter what the com-
bination of colour, no matter what the style, they look
well, for they have the national gift of knowing how to
wear their clothes. Even the widows in mourning,
and there were many of them, looked most interesting.
French women have a grace of carriage and know how
to walk, which is in striking contrast to the majority of
English, Canadian or American women. It is the
198
PARIS IN WAR TIME
ensemble which gives the Parisienne that air of distinc-
tion which is so characteristic.
The children were dressed in the styles which are
usually seen only in the fashion plates and as much
pride and thought was evidently spent upon them as on
the dress of the mothers themselves. The French
children in Paris are particularly well behaved and
obedient.
The trees in Le Bois were just bursting into leaf on
that first Sunday of mid March. The rented boats on
the little lakes were filled with young boys and their
sweethearts, and they splashed up and down and ran
into each other, and made much noise after the mannei
of people of that age under similar circumstances the
world over.
Crossing the Seine we ascended the hill to the race
course of St. Cloud, from which a magnificent view of
Paris is obtainable. It was a splendid situation for the
French Canadian hospital established there under the
command of Lt.-Col. Mignault of Montreal.
The French authorities did not want the wounded
from Verdun to come to the Paris hospitals, for it might
depress the people too much. So, though Verdun was
at its height, no wounded were seen in Paris and the
hospitals in fact were almost empty at the time. And as
the Parisians did not see any evidence of great losses
through the presence of wounded, it was quite natural
to conclude that there could not be many wounded. If
not why worry, for the newspapers were full of the
tremendous casualties inflicted on the enemy? The
French army must be very good to be able to hold the
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
German back like that, must it not? So Paris was op-
timistic and the wounded went elsewhere to the country
where it was said the air was much better than in a
large city like Paris.
The French Canadian hospital, however, was not
going to be done out of the work that they had come
so far to do, and demanded patients. As the hospital was
situated in the suburbs (where the air was presumably
good) permission was granted and it was filled with
wounded from Verdun on the following day.
Though not fully completed when I saw it, the
hospital was in running order. It consisted of a series
of wooden huts arranged in the area behind the grand
stand, and had just enough shade trees around to shelter
the huts partially from the sun. It was always a mar-
vel to me to see soldiers recovering from what have
always been considered to be fatal wounds. I saw one
man that day at St. Cloud who had been shot through
the centre of the forehead two days before at Verdun,
the bullet coming out of the top of his head, and leaving
the brain exposed. The man was sitting up in bed read-
ing and when the wet dressing was raised by the surgeon
one could see the brain pulsating.
Of the meetings of the War Allies1 Sanitary Com-
mission there is little to be said because they were of a
technical nature, and chiefly of interest to scientists.
The first meeting was held on March the 15th and one
was held thereafter every afternoon for the next three
weeks, with the exception of Sundays. About thirty-
five delegates were present altogether, representing the
200
PARIS IN WAR TIME
civilian, naval and military services of Russia, Italy,
Serbia, France, Belgium and Great Britain.
At each session some subject on sanitation was dis-
cussed according to a program decided upon the pre-
vious day. Some countries had already had experiences
with certain epidemics, which were quite unknown as
yet to the other allied countries; in such a case the
experience gained by one country in devising ways and
means of stamping out an epidemic would be of great
interest and practical value to the other countries.
A striking example of this was the experience of
Serbia with typhus fever. Typhus is conveyed from
man to man through the bites of lice infected through
biting some one who already has the disease. Serbia
had had a tremendous epidemic of the disease both in
the army and in the civilian population, and had had
to resort to all kinds of improvised means of control-
ling lice when their regular disinfecting apparatus had
been lost or destroyed during their retreat. Naturally
the experience of Serbia was of the greatest interest to
all the other armies which were also lice-infected but
had had no typhus fever as yet.
All the discussions were conducted in French, and
curious to relate the non-French Allies understood one
another more readily if possible than they did the
French themselves, largely due to the fact that the latter
talked so rapidly. Many scientists of great note were
present, among them being M. Roux who had succeed-
ed M. Pasteur as chief of the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
He was by far the easiest speaker of all to follow, —
so easy in fact that I constantly congratulated myself
201
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
on my knowledge of French when he was speaking,
only to sadly admit when the next Frenchman began
that I had still a long, long way to go.
Every morning the five of us who were represen-
tatives of the British army, Australia and Canada, met
and drafted our joint report of the previous day's meet-
ing for submission to our respective governments when
the Congress would be over; many days of labor were
thereby saved since the report was complete when the
meetings ended. This used up the mornings, and the
regular meetings took up the afternoons till five o'clock.
Every evening I took a lesson in French conversation
so that there was not much time for sight seeing even
if there had been anything to see. It was in reality
three weeks of hard work yet I managed to see quite a
bit of Paris and of what was going on in our spare half
hours and the two or three half days during which no
meetings were held.
Some of the delegates were very remarkable men.
The Frenchmen were all scientists of note. One of the
Serbian delegates had been continuously in the battle
field for four years and was thoroughly tired of war.
He was a handsome and very interesting man. In fact
all the Serbs whom I saw in Paris were big, fine-look-
ing men.
The chief Russian delegate was a prince, a lieuten-
ant-general of cavalry, and a wonderfully well in-
formed scientist. Though a man over sixty years of age
and without a medical degree, he seemed to be perfect-
ly informed in every question relating to bacteriology,
chemistry, sanitation and medicine and would put the
202
PARIS IN WAR TIME
average notable medical officer of health to shame. He
was to all of us a perfect marvel. He spoke English
and French fluently and had the keenest sense of
humour of any member of the congress, constantly en-
livening the proceedings by his witty and humerous
remarks.
One day the Commission visited the French store-
houses in Paris, where all the drugs, medical and sani-
tary supplies for the French army were kept. Some-
thing of the magnitude of the war being conducted by
the French could be gauged by the enormous ware-
houses, packed to the roof with medical supplies for the
army.
We also visited the series of wooden buildings being
erected to house the Red Cross supplies sent to France
as gifts from other countries. The Canadian building
was the only one completed and stocked and we were
shown that as a sample of the others; all the French
representatives were very careful to explain to me in-
dividually that Canada had been very good and more
than kind in remembering France.
The Russian' Prince, who objected strenuously to
this trip, vented his satire during the whole of the after-
noon. We would, perhaps be ushered into a huge ware-
house packed with wooden boxes to the ceiling, when
the Prince would adjust his eyeglasses and looking them
over with a comprehensive sweep of his hand say to me,
for we travelled together that day, — "Ah, yes, boxes!
how very interesting! do you know, Colonel, nothing
gives me greater pleasure than spending the afternoon
looking at piles of boxes?" Each syllable was so clear-
203
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
ly and distinctly enunciated that the simplest remark
made by this born comedian of a Prince was perfectly
delightful, and we had a joyous afternoon together.
Pasteur is a name reverenced by one and all in
France. The first question asked when you are intro-
duced as a scientist to Frenchmen is, "Do you know
our Pasteur and his work?" and when you reply in the
affirmative they beam on you and look as if they wanted
to kiss you.
The Pasteur Institute was devoted entirely to
putting up the various sera, vaccines and other mater-
ial required by the army in the field. We were shown
over the Institute by M. Roux, the Director. The rever-
ence with which each foreign delegate removed his
hat as he approached the rooms where Pasteur had
lived and worked was most impressive to the resident of
a country where there was little reverence for anything
in the way of ability of any sort except that for making
money. Pasteur is buried in a mausoleum in the Insti-
tute and numerous tributes from societies and great men
the world over testify to the esteem in which he was held
by the thinking portion of the world.
One particularly interesting feature of the work
of the Institute was the manufacture of a certain poison
for rats in the trenches. Rats are a great nuisance and
a possible source of plague to the armies in the field.
In the Autumn the rats come into the trenches where
there is an abundance of waste food, and are particu-
larly numerous where there is lots of water near which
they like to breed.
The method used to kill them is quite ingen-
204
PARIS IN WAR TIME
ious. The rats are fed at a certain time every
day for about ten days, at the end of which they will
come in large numbers almost on the minute. The
poisoned food is then placed for them and a large pro-
portion of the rats are destroyed. Where poison has
once been tried it is useless to make any further attempts
with the same poison for a long time to come, for the
rats will refuse to touch it. The wholesale method out-
lined has been found in practise by the French to give
the best results.
Our trip to the French front in the Champagne was
interesting. Leaving the station one morning at eight
we arrived at Chalons-sur-Marne about eleven and
visited a couple of hospitals there. The hospitals were
well equipped, and some of the surgical devices in use
were new and exceedingly ingenious.
The most vivid impression which remains of those
French hospitals, however, was the lack of fresh air
in them ; seldom have I breathed a more vitiated atmos-
phere. Though it was a warm, pleasant day outside,
every window in the hospital was closed tight.
It is another indication of the strong scientific con-
tradictions sometimes met with. Though, in theory,
the French are most excellent sanitarians and as a
country revere the name of Pasteur, while we have for-
gotten, if we ever did know, the name of Lister, in prac-
tice they are about as poor a nation in practical sani-
tation as it is possible to be. Imagine a hospital, thor-
oughly equipped and clean as a new pin, with such bad
air that one of our party fainted and another had to
leave in a hurry to escape the same fate.
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ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
After an excellent lunch at the town hotel we left
by motors and char-a-banc for the field hospitals.
The drive of some twelve miles was made over the
chalk plains of the Champagne and the dense clouds
of white dust, raised by the cars ahead, half smothered
us. The only trees on this rolling country were scrub
evergreens and only enough of these had been left for
cover, the rest having been cut for stakes, and pit props.
Through these bits of woods and across the open country
ran the numerous white ditches used for reserve
trenches.
The field hospitals themselves were as fine as I
have ever seen in equipment and appearance. They
consisted of series of huts, well laid qut and with walks
planted with trees and shrubs from the surrounding
country. That was the artistic touch that made French
field hospitals look better than the British hospitals.
Wells had been sunk for hundreds of feet in the chalk,
pumping engines installed, and disinfection chambers
and baths built with a capacity of a thousand men a
day.
While there we saw German aeroplanes being
shelled and were much interested to note that the anti-
air-craft fire of the French gunners was just as bad as
that of the British.
On our return we visited a French mobile labora-
tory at Chalons, and were much struck by their method
of running it; like our own Canadian laboratory they
carried all their equipment in boxes which were con-
veyed by a single motor lorry.
We arrived in Paris at midnight tired and sleepy to
206
PARIS IN WAR TIME
find my trusty "Rad" waiting for me, and we drove
home a load of thankful friends, while the rest of the
delegates searched in vain for taxis which were unob-
tainable at that time of night.
A small item appearing in the Parisian journals on
the following day made us think. It read, "Chalons-
sur-Marne bombed by aeroplanes." Whether the
aeroplanes that we had seen being shelled had carried
back word that an expedition of some sort had
been seen coming and going from Chalons in a
large number of motors and whether they had sus-
pected that it was the congress including Lord Kit-
chener, Mr. Asquith, General Cadorna and others will
never be known ; the fact seemed to be that Chalons had
never been bombed before our visit.
The saddest and at the same time the most inspiring
sight that it was my privilege to see in Paris or during
the whole war was during our visit to the institutes for
the maimed and blinded soldiers.
The institute for the maimed had for its purpose
the starting out in life afresh men who had lost arms and
legs in battle. The French are at the bottom an ex-
ceedingly practical people even if they do not appreci-
ate fresh air as they might. They discovered very
quickly that the first thing necessary in the treatment
of disabled soldiers after they were ready to leave the
hospitals was to make them realize that they were still
valuable and useful members of society. To this end
the soldier was fitted out with the best mechanical
appliances in the way of wooden arms and legs that it
was possible to give him; and it was characteristic of
207
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
the French people that they had these artificial limbs
made by the disabled soldiers themselves. This saved
the labor of able bodied men and gave interesting and
necessary work to the disabled soldiers.
The trades being taught were basket making, brush
making, piano tuning, draughting, typewriting, tailor-
ing, tinsmithing and so forth; while classes in reading,
writing and other subjects were held for those who were
deficient in these requirements, and anxious to learn.
And here the astounding observation was made that in
certain cases uneducated men have been able to learn
more in six months than the average child learns in as
many years. In such cases the individual has an extraor-
dinary power of assimilation and simply "eats up"
everything put before him. The maimed men were all
happy and smoked and sang at their work. They were
heroes still.
The school for the blind was, in some ways, of quite
a different character. At the time of our visit there were
about 350 soldiers in the school, learning to be self-
reliant and useful citizens. Naturally it is a much more
difficult task to teach a blind man than a maimed one
that he is still a valuable asset to his country and the
first weeks in the Institute are frequently devoted to
convincing him of this cardinal fact. When he has
learned to dress himself, get about alone and begins to
learn a trade he becomes convinced of this truth and
the victory has been won. For the appalling future
facing him of a life in total darkness dependent on a wife
or parents is too terrible a one for any man with any
self respect. Unless new hope can be given them they
208
THE CAMOUFLAGE.
Anti-aircraft artillery disguised against enemy observers flying above.
PARIS IN WAR TIME
face the prospect of becoming drunkards, beggars and
parasites on society. And the principle underlying all
this work, is to make the blind man feel that he is yet a
self-reliant, valuable citizen of "La Belle France."
How it is working out a glance at the men in the
various buildings clearly showed. Here was one group
of men wearing smoked glasses feverishly manufactur-
ing brushes ; as they worked they whistled. In the next
room another group was mending the seats of rattaned
chairs; in the next they were making raffia baskets; in
the next willow baskets, chairs and tables. Another lot
was learning to set type for books for the blind ; others
were learning typewriting, piano-tuning, barrel making
and boot repairing.
Perhaps the most interesting of all were the men
learning to be professional masseurs : This is a partic-
ularly suitable profession for the blind because it de-
pends for its success altogether on the sense of feeling,
and these chaps rubbed and manipulated each other's
muscles and joints in the most approved expert style,
using one another as patients. Some of the blind gra-
duate masseurs were already practising their profes-
sion in Paris.
One recent arrival was being conducted about the
garden by one of the white clad nurses, who was evi-
dently trying to comfort him in some of his bad mo-
ments. The poor chap looked heart broken and one
felt, even though dimly, something of his Gethsemane
as he realized that the glory of the sun and all the
beauties of nature were no more for him, — that before
him was only night eternal. Yet a moment afterwards
209
15
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
when the supper bell rang the rattle of canes on the
walks and the sound of scores of men whistling and sing-
ing as they came from all the buildings round about
proved most convincingly that hundreds of others had
gone through this same struggle and had come out vic-
torious.
My visit to the Institute for the blinded soldiers
was to me the most inspiring experience that I had in
France, strange as that statement may sound, for it
showed more conclusively than war itself the infinite
capacity for courage that exists in almost every man.
Yet the sights that we saw — so terribly pathetic — made
one realize as never before the truth of the epigram
"War is hell."
When we again passed through the gates of St.
Denis on our way towards our "home" in the field, it
was a sunny day and all the fruit trees were in full
bloom, making a broad belt of white for three or four
miles around Paris. With the exception of a stop at
the cathedral of Amiens to see the wonderful old
stained glass windows, unequalled by any in Great Bri-
tain, we travelled steadily all day without incident and
reached our little home town near the Belgian border
by five o'clock to find that all was well.
210
CHAPTER XIV.
TABLE TALK AT A FLANDERS MESS.
44 T OOK Out," warned the Colonel as they stumbled
J-^ along the Rue de la Gare, "there's a hole some-
where about here." The Canadian officers passed gin-
gerly on feeling their way down the inky street. A
Zeppelin had been over the night before and the light-
ing regulations were being strictly enforced.
Suddenly the Captain stopped, passed his hand
along a brick wall, gave a pull at a wire, and a gong
on the inside rang like a fire alarm.
"How in the dickens you can see in this darkness
beats me," said the Colonel. "You must have eyes like
a French cat."
The door was opened by Bittleson, and the three
officers entered and walked along the dimly lit, tiled
hall into a room at the far end.
"Home, Sweet Home," said the Colonel looking
around the room. "It is the nearest thing we can get
to it anyway, worse luck." They all threw their British
warms and caps onto a large chair, flung their sam-
brown belts on top of them and picking out their own
respective easy chairs drew up before the fire, which
was burning brightly in the French grate stove in the
corner of the mess room, formerly the dining room of
Madame Deswaerts. The whole side of the room
facing the rose garden and pigeon cots was glassed in
and the two huge French windows were, no doubt, a
211
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
pleasant feature in the summer time; at present they
admitted a great deal of the cold, damp air from out-
side.
"Rawson," called the Colonel. Rawson a little
black-haired Jew, the Doctor's batman and tempor-
ary mess cook, entered.
"Yessir," said Rawson.
"Put some more coal on that fire; it's as cold as
hell in here," grumbled the Colonel.
The fire was duly replenished while the Colonel
took a cigarette from his case and opened his "By-
stander."
"Do you know how to cook that canned aspara-
gus?" asked the Colonel as Rawson turned to leave the
room.
"No Sir," said Rawson.
"Well how do you think you would cook it?" asked
the Colonel.
This was a poser; Rawson was evidently non-
plussed.
"Would you boil it, Sir?" he ventured when the
silence had become oppressive.
"You guessed right," and the Colonel deftly flick-
ed a burned match up behind a picture of the local
cure. "What would you do with the tough part of the
stalks?"
"I dunno, Sir." Rawson was stumped again.
"Have you ever eaten asparagus?" asked the
Colonel.
"No, Sir," said Rawson, "but I've seen it in the
stores."
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TABLE TALK AT A FLANDERS MESS
"Well, go and boil it for five minutes with some
salt," ordered the Colonel, "and then serve dinner."
"Yessir," said Rawson, retiring to the kitchen.
"It beats hell," fussed the Colonel, "how ignorant
that boy is; he hasn't a single ray of intelligence; he
carries on just like a trained monkey; he never thinks,
never."
"Yes, he does, "contradicted the Captain lookingup
from a New York Journal received that day, "I actual-
ly saw him thinking yesterday; I could almost see the
wheels going around ; in fact, I imagined I could hear
them grating, so seldom had they been used. It was
really one of the most fascinating things I ever saw; you
couldn't describe it but you could act it. The Doc. saw
it too. Wasn't it funny, Doc.?"
"It was a marvel," said the Doctor. "I have al-
ways classed Rawson as belonging to the palaeolithic
age and imagined the missing link to have about the
same brain capacity as he has; since our experience yes-
terday I have come to the conclusion that Rawson is
a 'throw back' and had normal ancestry. This is more
apparent when we know he is never savage but on the
contrary very gentle."
The conversation was interrupted by the entrance
of Bittleson, the Colonel's batman. Bittleson had been
deposed from his position as cook two days before for
being dirty and careless. He now came forward with
his cap on his head and saluted as only Bittleson could
salute.
"Beg pardon, Sir," he hesitated with a depreca-
tory smile, pointing with his thumb to the kitchen
213
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
door, "but Rawson aint really up to cooking stuff like
this here sparrow grass — not yet. P'raps I had better
take a holt."
"All right," agreed the Colonel, "are you sure you
know how to cook it yourself?"
"Sure," answered Bittleson with an inflexion that
spoke volumes as to his knowledge. "Why when we
was at Salisbury -
"Shut up," commanded the Colonel and Bittleson
respectfully saluted and retired.
When the dinner was served we waded through
our passable soup, tough roast beef with "frits" and
waited with pleasant anticipation for the chef d'ceuvre
of the evening. The asparagus duly arrived and was
placed on the table by Bittleson himself with some-
thing of a flourish.
"What the sam hill do you know about that!"
said the disappointed Captain as all gazed at the plate
full of white asparagus butts, — as hard as tent pegs.
The tender edible portions had been thrown away. The
Colonel turned to Bittleson but the latter was too quick
for him and had already made a strategic retreat.
"What a mess-president?" said the Captain, "Eh,
what, Doc.?"
"Go to blazes," growled the Colonel, "You can't get
results without tools; pass the coffee pot." And they
relapsed into silence for a few moments as they severally
speculated on the number of Bittlesons they knew of in
the army — in all ranks.
"Well, I wonder how long this blinking war is
214
TABLE TALK AT A FLANDERS MESS
going to last," queried the Colonel. "No signs of light
on the horizon yet; Fritzy is some sticker."
"I am fed up with the whole thing," returned the
Captain snapping his cigarette butt viciously into a
corner. "What are we out here for anyway; what are
we fighting for; what is the whole bally business about;
that is what I would like to know?"
"What did you come out for?" asked the Colonel
"You had a good position and a good future in your pro-
fession over in the States; something made you come;
what was it?"
"I don't know what it was; chiefly a desire to be
in the game and not be a quitter I guess; I hate the
idea of my kids, if I ever have any, asking me what I
had done in the great war. I went up to Forbes Bay
to play golf and forget the war and suddenly found my-
self buying a ticket for Valcartier Camp and here I
am." There was silence for a minute. "What did you
come out for Colonel?" asked the Captain.
"For adventure," replied the Colonel. "So did
everybody else; anybody who says he didn't come out
here for some such reason as that is a damned liar;
don't you think so Doc.?"
"I don't think I did for one," responded the Doc.,
"but I wouldn't be sure; I had every inducement to
stay home if any man had, congenial work, interesting
hobbies, the finest woman in the world, and I hate the
military game; I guess there were lots of others like
myself."
"Well, what in thunder did you come for; what
was the big idea?" demanded the Colonel.
215
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
"The big idea in my case was that I thought I
might be of some use in keeping our men efficient,
in other words 'service/ " said the Doc. "What is
more, that is what you and the Cap. both came for if
you would only admit it."
"Piffle," snapper the Colonel.
"It isn't piffle, it's the truth," asserted the Doc.
"Why do you feel sore now because other fellows you
know haven't come out? If love of adventure brought
you, there is no reason for feeling crusty because your
friends haven't the same love of adventure that you
have. Let them stay at home and mind their own busi-
ness if they want to and can't see things as we do."
"Yes, but it's different now to what it was at first.
Everybody knows we are in this fight to the death,—
that if we are licked it is 'good-night'!" said the
Colonel.
"You can't convince them of that in England—
not all at once," argued the Cap. "The newspapers
still construe every local success into a great victory,
the great mass of the people think the war will be over
in the autumn, and the strikers still strike!"
"Well, if they don't see the desperate nature of
the affair in England how can you expect them to re-
alize it in Canada?" questioned the Doc. "England
has air raids, bombardment of her coast towns by
German raiders, ships sunk by submarines and all the
evidences of a nearby war. Of course she thinks she
has the money and that money will win. I guess Ger-
many hasn't much real money but she carries on pretty
well without it"
216
TABLE TALK AT A FLANDERS MESS
"She is like America in that respect in regard to
money — thinks that the last dollar will win," answered
the Cap. "It won't, its the last big army in the field that
can strike at a vital point that will win this war."
"That takes money," said the Colonel.
"Yes, but hang it!" countered the Cap., "Germany
can print money and keep on paying; as long as the
war lasts paper money will be honored; it has to be if
the Government says so. Only when the end comes
and there is no gold to honor the paper will the crash
come: Germany hopes to be in the position to obtain
compensation when the war ends. I believe that Ger-
many is deliberately trying to ruin the Allies and par-
ticularly England by causing them to make tremendous
expenditures in gold, which is the only thing neutrals
will honour ; then when we are weakened in both men
and money she hopes to get in her knock-out!"
"As a secondary consideration she may be trying to
ruin England because she has failed to get in the
knock-out blow; that is more likely," reasoned the
Colonel. "She has tried hard enough to give the
knock-out both in the first rush to Paris, at Ypres, at
Verdun, at the battle of Jutland, and by her Zep and
submarine campaigns. Hitherto she has failed. Now I
believe she is carrying on in the hope that we will be-
come exhausted and quit; they don't know the English."
"Neither does anybody else," said the Cap. angrily,
"they don't know themselves. They laughed at Lord
Roberts and nearly crucified him: they laughed at the
German navy, at Zeppelins, at subs and at poison gas,
and they paid no attention to Sir William Ramsay
217
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
for kicking against American cotton going into Ger-
many to make explosives to be used against us. Now
they are having a great laugh at Pemberton Billings
because he says the air service is rotten and advocates
the building of thousands of aeroplanes wherewith to
swamp the Germans with bombs. When he talks in
Parliament, they get up and walk out of the house.
That is typical of the English people as a race; they
are so intolerant and so d — conservative that even in
questions of life and death they won't learn. The aero-
plane is a new brand of the service and therefore they
won't take it seriously and they say Billings is just a
blatherskite. But you know and I know that when
sixty planes went over the German lines the other night
they played havoc with certain cantonments. If so why
will not ten or twenty times as many planes accomplish
ten or twenty times as much? It is simply a problem
in mathematics. But will Englishmen see that? Not
much. 'Muddle through' is their national motto and
they are proud of it. Thank God the Germans are
just as stupid. If it was the United States they wouldn't
play the fool in regard to new ideas, believe me."
"Rubbish," retorted the Colonel, firing up at the
mention of the United States, "There is a nation with
no sand ; she hasn't even got gumption enough to know
that other people are fighting her battles for her. She
has a three-for-a-cent war on with Mexico and she can't
raise 50,000 voluntary troops, while Villa sticks his
fingers to his nose at them. Their only aeroplane was
brought down by a Mexican revolver bullet; their fleet
218
TABLE TALK AT A FLANDERS MESS
is a joke; they are the greatest bunch of bunco steerers
in the world to-day!"
"Don't you believe it," replied the Cap. with de-
liberation, "I have lived in the U.S. for several years
and I think I know the people. They have the makings
of a wonderful nation. They are keen as mustard and
without silly antique prejudices inherited from the
middle ages. It is true, as a nation, they have some-
thing of a swelled head. But give them a chance ; they
will come up to the scratch some day; mark my words."
"Dollars! Dollars! Dollars! that is the American
God," continued the Colonel, "like the children of
Israel they worship the golden calf; they have no other
ideal than to become rich, buy automobiles and 'put it
over' the other fellows. The Germans spit in their faces
every day and they say 'business is business' and take it.
The Germans sink the Lusitania and the President sends
a note advising them to be more careful in future and
so it goes. Why, any decent man will strike back when
he is struck by a filthy swine; even a worm will turn."
"He couldn't," objected the Cap.
"Why couldn't he," returned the Colonel. "What's
the matter with him? Is he a jelly fish?"
"Because he is the chief engineer of the nation,"
explained the Cap. "He is head of a nation that is
a conglomerate; it isn't yet fused; it contains fifteen
to twenty millions of people of German origin. It
is like running an express train. As long as the
track is straight and the levers are left alone the
engine will keep the tracks if he can keep his hand on
the throttle and observe the signals. There are some
219
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
bad signals up in the States. It is overrun with spies
who know everything; the navy is in bad shape; the
Mexican affair is on; they are nervous about Japan and
they have no army. With a publicity bureau such as
the Germans have, controlling many newspapers and
magazines, the enemy can do a tremendous lot to alien-
ate public sympathy from the allied cause, and until
America is touched in the quick there will be no de-
mand for a change of conditions."
"Then the President should lead public opinion,"
announced the Colonel.
"Yes, and bring down the wrath of the enemy upon
him; just give him time; he hasn't got that jaw for
nothing; he knows history; his opportunity will come
and he will rise to it. Don't you think so Doc.?"
"I don't know," said the Doc. "I used to think
he had tremendous reserve power; now I'm not so sure.
The President, in my opinion, made his great mistake
when he failed to make a dignified protest on behalf
of the violation of Belgium's neutrality. The U.S.
stood for great things in the world; she was the ideal
of the smaller nations to whom she was the personifica-
tion of Liberty. She fell down and to-day even France
shakes her head or smiles behind her hand when the
name of the United States is mentioned. Yet, I feel
that we cannot judge because we don't know all the
facts. The best men in the United States are with
us heart and soul; they feel disgraced and degraded
individually and as a nation because they are forced to
eat dirt; they want to go to war for they realize the
European situation. Yet, we can't tell what is going
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TABLE TALK AT A FLANDERS MESS
on behind the scenes in the United States; we don't
know all facts; the cards are not all on the table. If
we knew what President Wilson knows, we might
judge, but we don't. For all we know Great Britain
and the other Allies may want America to keep out.
The Japanese question may be a very ticklish one.
We don't know and therefore we can't judge; that is
my opinion."
"What is the feeling over there anyway?" asked
the Captain.
"It was hard to determine," said the Doc. "Ap-
parently everything was going on as usual in New
York. The editorials of papers like the New York
Tribune and Times were absolutely the finest I have
ever seen showing why the United States should be in
this war. On the other hand the Hearst papers and
many others were antagonistic; the middle West at
least is pro-German, and the South is an unknown
quantity. I met many thinking men who used to be
very favorable to the President but who now curse him
and his typewriter. Many business men had signs
hung over their desks (Nix on the war.' They are dif-
ferent from English people who through their press
are leading the politicians and forcing the authorities
to more strenuous action. The United States on the
contrary seemed to be willing to place all responsibility
on the shoulders of the President and follow him.
Meanwhile, he senses public opinion and plays golf.
He has more power than any man in the world to-day,
far more."
"And you really think they will finally come in?"
asked the Colonel. 221
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
"I think they will have to ; there will be no choice,"
answered the Doc. "If they would only realize that
the British fleet is the only thing standing between them
and Germany they would become panicked. But they
don't and while the British fleet protects them from the
Prussian — who is out for world domination — they soak
the British hundreds of per cent, profit on supplies. It
is really very funny if you can see it from the humor-
ous standpoint."
"It seems pretty rotten to me," said the Colonel,
"for a nation to take everything and give nothing, while
others fight for it."
"They don't know anything about Europe; they
don't, as a nation, know what the war is about. As far
as that goes we have nothing to swank about in Can-
ada!" said the Doc.
"Canada has realized her responsibilities, any-
way," put in the Colonel.
"Just exactly what she has not," contradicted
the Doc., in turn waxing wroth. "What have we done
anyway? Put four divisions in the field, of which
two-thirds were born in Great Britain. We have some-
where about nine million people in Canada; we should
get 12 per cent, of that number under a system of na-
tional service, that is nearly 1,100,000 men. They say
we have recruited about 300,000 for service abroad.
It isn't as if the rest were mobilized for war purposes—
they are not. There is not even a home guard. There
are tens of thousands of men around the streets of To-
ronto to-day who should be at war; I know a lot of
them personally and they haven't 'bad hearts' either,
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TABLE TALK AT A FLANDERS MESS
or dependent mothers. They are just rotters, nothing
else."
"Some of them who work for Red Cross one day in
six months, throw out their chests and tell you they
are (doing their bit' at home. I saw red all the time
I was back and a lot of them felt very uneasy when
they met me. When I see these chaps here tramping
in and out of the trenches day after day and think of
those spineless blighters at home it makes me sick."
"Ottawa has no backbone. It hasn't nerve enough
to do anything. Quebec holds the whip hand and
Quebec is anti-war. And so the political game
goes on while Canadian profiteers make barrels of
money — blood money — out of munitions and food-
stuffs. We make the most of what we have done but
I believe that Canada's effort is a disgrace."
"Well what would you have?" questioned the
Colonel, "Canada has to produce food for the Allies;
she has to carry on ; she could easily be ruined by con-
scripting all her men for active service."
"Nobody suggests that all her men be conscripted
for active service," said the Doc. "What is needed is
that every man should be working for the Empire.
Whether it is in growing wheat, making munitions or
fighting, makes little difference. We need everybody
working for the common cause. There are plenty of
men trying to sell real estate to-day who should be out
ploughing land for wheat to keep French and British
soldiers fit; there are lots of chaps who cannot fight
or plough who can run a lathe in a munitions factory;
there are plenty of women who could replace men on
223
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
farms; every woman and man in France is working.
Why should not Canada be doing the same?"
"Its quite a bit different," argued the Cap., with a
wink at the Colonel. "After all if Germany won out
it wouldn't make much difference to Canada."
"Wouldn't it?" demanded the Doc., hotly. "That
is what a relative of mine said and I am only waiting
for an opportunity to see the swine and tell him what
I think of him. If the British fleet failed to-day do
you know how long it would take the Germans to get
over to Canada? About ten days! And about ten
thousand German marines with a couple of naval guns
would make Canada throw up her hands as fast as a
footpad would an old lady in a dark lane. I would
say that ten high explosive shells in Quebec and about
twenty in Montreal would do the trick. That follow-
ed by the despatch of two or three regiments to Ottawa
would settle the matter. The whole thing would be
too ridiculous for words. The United States would
mind their own business because the Monroe doctrine
would avail but little without troops to back it up."
"Then what?" asked the Colonel, as the Doc. stop-
ped for breath.
"Canada is the ideal country for a powerful Ger-
man colony. I honestly believe they would prefer
Canada with all its latent resources, its water power,
great wheat fields, minerals and forest wealth, to any
spot on earth. With their systematic methods, their
thousands of trained scientists in all branches of in-
dustry, their tremendous capacity for work and re-
sourcefulness, they would take a hold of Canada and
224
TABLE TALK AT A FLANDERS MESS
develop it in a way that would startle the world. Ger-
many has millions of surplus population that she would
transfer to Canada for development purposes. She
would have 100 million people to the south of her for
a market and in ten years she would control the mar-
kets of the whole world. That is the German dream
and there is only one thing that stands in the way of
its accomplishment, only one thing."
"The British fleet?" asked the Cap.
"The British fleet!" repeated the Doc.
"I think you look on the whole thing too seri-
ously," objected the Colonel. "After all we are not re-
duced to extremities or anything like it."
"No and that is the idea of every other conserva-
tive man in the British Empire," said the Doc. "They
all hope that something will turn up before long, and
fail to consider that while they hope the German works.
Just take a common enough example of how the devils
do work in comparison to ourselves. You remember
those trenches that we lost in the salient for several
days to the Germans. Well our fellows were simply
thunderstruck when we took them back. They were
remodelled, strengthened and put into such perfect
shape that our chaps said they had never seen a real
trench before. The beggars must have worked twenty-
four hours a day to do it. Catch our fellows doing
anything like that."
"What good did it do them? We got them back,"
laughed the Colonel.
"Yes, and did you notice the price we paid. Every-
thing we got from them we pay the utmost for; they
225
16
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
extract the last ounce from us; and so it will go on to
the end. If they work twenty-four hours in the day
we will have to do the same. You can't help taking
your hat off to the brutes."
"Just about once a day," agreed the Cap.
"Or oftener," said the Colonel.
"Well, what is the end going to be?" asked the Cap.
"Personally, I don't think there is any doubt about
us winning out finally, but the end is not yet in sight.
We have not used all our resources yet because as an
Empire we have not felt that we were up against it
hard. But the British are coming to it and if the war
lasts long enough Great Britain will be rejuvenated.
She was getting pretty rotten before the war. Suffer-
ing is chastening her; I have great faith in that for
there is no doubt that trials and suffering strengthen a
nation just as they strengthen individuals. I believe
a newer and greater Britain will arise out of the ashes
of the old. There will be many problems between
capital and labor to work out; there must be a redistri-
bution of land; people will have to work much harder
than they have ever had to before. But to five millions
of men in the army of the British Empire a man has be-
come a man once more. When men stand side
by side in the trenches, while the German shells play
upon them, the men of wealth, or education, or title
realize that a shell does not discriminate between him
and the workman by his side. The soldier knows that
the only thing that counts is whether a man is really a
man; when he has stood before his maker for weeks
at a time in the front line, not knowing when his hour
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TABLE TALK AT A FLANDERS MESS
would strike, he realizes that there arc few things in
life that really count. He is going to take that point
of view back with him into civilian life and he is going
to put it into practice. He will have no fear of anybody.
He will want to make a comfortable living but he will
not, at least for years to come, adopt the old ideas that
money or so-called position really count. Because he
knows what really does count; he has had the greatest
experiences and has felt the most tremendous excitement
that can come to a man in Hfe and a great deal of what
would have appealed to him before the war no longer
moves him,"
"Therefore I believe that there will be a new under-
standing between the rich and the poor; between the
educated and the ignorant. There will be a new idea
of public service. These hundreds of thousands of
people who have been helping in Red Cross and other
service work will not go back to the old careless life,
for they will have been moulded to new points of view
and a new sense of responsibility. All this, of course,
pre-supposes that the war will last long enough so that
the nation as a nation will suffer. The profiteer must be
shorn of his ill gotten gains; the taxes must be heavy
enough to pinch everybody; the necessity to save in
order to provide for others must come home to every
man, woman and child. Through things like that and
the suffering which has come and will come to relatives
of the killed and wounded the nation will get a new out-
look on life and a healthy one. I think we are now in
the dawning of a new era."
"Sounds like a book," commented the Colonel. "Do
227
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
you really believe that people will change? Personally
I doubt it"
"I think so," reasoned the Doc. "The basis of all
reform is education and the world is certainly under-
going a process of education right now such as has never
been known in history. You have seen how quickly a
city can be educated by going about it properly and we
all know that the point of view of the world has under-
gone a tremendous transformation on nearly everything
since the beginning of the war."
"Only Canada lags about two years behind. She
doesn't know that a war is on. Far from here she pur-
sues her peaceful way quite oblivious of the war. But
the very fact that she is safe, that she has not been in-
vaded, makes her moral obligation even greater than if
she had been, because she is free to develop her indus-
tries normally and without loss. She can pay; she must
pay. Canada's obligations are just as great as her re-
sources; no more; no less. That is the viewpoint that
posterity will judge her by. And if she does rise to
the occasion she will go down in history as a real nation
and with a soul."
"The Doc. is right," agreed the Colonel.
"You bet," seconded the Cap. "Some speech that
-eh, what?"
There was a ripping sound in the distance, fol-
lowed by the crash of an exploding shell. In the
silence that followed the hum of an approaching plane
could be heard. "Bombs!" warned the Colonel.
Bittleson appeared. "Excuse me, Sir, Madame
Deswaerts presents her compliments and says would
228
TABLE TALK AT A FLANDERS MESS
the gentlemen please come down into the cellar till the
aeroplanes pass over?"
"All right Bittleson," agreed the Colonel, as they
got up and strolled cellarwards.
229
CHAPTER XV.
ON THE BELGIAN BORDER.
UPON my return from Canada, while waiting in
London for orders to proceed to France, I received
a telegram to appear at Buckingham Palace on the fol-
lowing morning at 10. 15. The taxi drove through the
outer courtyard to the inner palace entrance and my
coat and hat were taken charge of by a scarlet-coated
attendant who gave me a numbered check for the same.
An equerry-in-waiting asked me what my decora-
tion was to be, and he showed me into a large room with
an immense bay window from which a splendid view
of a magnificent park could be seen. The bay window
was divided up by scarlet ropes into several sections,
into one of whch I was ushered. One of these was for
the C.B.'s, and contained a sole occupant, a naval officer.
The next sections were for the C.M.G.'s, the next for
the D.S.O.'s, M.C.'s, etc.
There were eight officers in our section, the first
six being generals. An attendant then came and placed
a hook on the left hand side of our tunics, our names
were checked over and we were placed in order accord-
ing to rank.
When everything was ready the great doors leading
into the room where King George was to invest us, were
swung back and we slowly proceeded towards it. The
first name was called and the naval officer stepped for-
ward and disappeared into the room beyond. The next
230
ON THE BELGIAN BORDER
officer, Lord Locke, who was the first in line for the
C.M.G. went next, and so they proceeded quickly until
my turn came.
As I advanced I could see the King standing about
twenty feet in front of a large window, dressed in a
morning suit, and looking exactly like his pictures. As
he hung the decoration of the order on my little hook
he shook hands cordially and said "I am glad to give
you the C.M.G."
Then he added, "Have you been with my army in
France?"
I replied, "Yes, sir, with the first army."
"Have you been out there long?" he queried.
"I have been there for eight months, was re-called
to Canada for two months, and am now on my way
back," I replied.
He nodded, adding something I did not catch,
shook hands for the second time, and repeated as though
he really meant it, "I am very glad to give you the
C.M.G."
I backed away a few steps, and retired by another
route, feeling that this was the simplest and easiest or-
deal I had ever gone through. It was impossible to
make a mistake even if you had tried to and everybody
was kindness and courtesy itself. An attendant re-
moved the decoration, placed it in a box and handed it
to me; another attendant handed me my coat and cap
and I left the palace. "So much for Buckingham 1"
Soldiers were drilling in the courtyard and guards
sprang to attention and presented arms as I passed,
while a policeman hailed a taxi for me in which I
231
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
drove to St. Paul's to see the most beautiful chapel
there — that of uThe most distinguished order of St.
Michael and St. George."
As I drove by West Sandling camp and through
Hythe to take the morning packet back to France a
cold raw wind searched my very bones. The channel
was rough enough to make the windward side of the
deck wet and unpleasant and the officers with which
the boat was packed huddled into their trench coats
and British warms trying to keep out the cold. The
torpedo boat destroyers threshed about hither and thi-
ther in smothers of spray while away to the north the
mine sweepers stretched across from shore to shore in-
tent upon their never-ending search.
It was rough travelling on the road to the north
next day; rain, snow, sleet and hail, driven by a stinging
wind, lashed our faces during the whole of the trip.
En route we called at General Headquarters and Army
Headquarters to report, and arrived at noon in the little
French town on the Belgian border which was the new
location of our field laboratory.
The Major and Captain seemed glad to see me
and escorted me to my new billet near the railway sta-
tion ; there was no glass in the windows and the room
was very cold. The officers pointed out a big hole in
the pavement in front of the house, made the day before
by a German bomb. The bomb had killed a number
of horses and several men and had blown the glass out
of all the windows in the neighborhood. But the Major
assured me that a bomb seldom struck twice in the
same place and that, as the Bosches were after the rail-
232
ON THE BELGIAN BORDER
way station close by at the end of the street, the safest
place was the immediate neighborhood of the station.
As this sounded quite logical, I remained at the billet
until summer time, though I never noticed any great
eagerness on the part of my two officers to move to the
vicinity of the station from comfortable billets in the
centre of the town.
The very next day the town was bombed again
and one "dud" fell in our back yard.
The new town was larger than our old one, but
very uninteresting and very dirty in the winter months.
The people were distinctly rougher in dress, appear-
ance and manners than those in France farther from the
Belgian frontier, differences possibly due to the effects
of mixture with Flemish blood. The surrounding
country was rolling and much prettier than that around
Merville and it was a great relief to be able to rest the
eyes with the diversities of a rolling landscape instead
of constantly looking out upon a deadly monotonous
level country.
The headquarters of the Canadian corps was in
the town and the Canadians occupied the front line at,
and north of, Ploegsteert wood, opposite the Messines-
Wytschaete ridge.
For days and weeks officers and men kept calling
to get the news from home in Canada, particularly
about recruiting, and they would listen as long as I
would talk. Favorite questions were : "What does the
corner of King and Yonge streets look like?" and "How
is Tommy Church?"
Among those who called was General Mercer to
233
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
whom I had brought a box of candy from one of his
office staff in Toronto and he stayed for half an hour
while I told him all the home news. We dined with him
that night and had a very pleasant evening with his
staff, Lt.-Col. Hayter, Lt-Col. McBrien, Captain
Gooderham, Lt. Cartwright; the General was very
optimistic as to the final result of the war, though he
felt that it would last at least three years longer.
Our laboratory was now located in a school which
was being utilized as part of No. 2 British casualty
clearing station and the first visit I made to this hospi-
tal was to see an old school friend, Captain Cole, the
medical officer of the Princess Patricia's who was there
with a bullet through his lungs. The very first day
after his arrival from the base after an attack of pneu-
monia he was caught by a sniper. He made an uninter-
rupted recovery and eventually returned to active ser-
vice.
The British Army in France was steadily growing
larger and troops were beginning to be shifted about
to give place to new divisions coming into the line to
train. A new division is never put directly into the
firing line and given a section of front; that would
be too risky. The new division is billeted in the area
back of the lines and is gradually brought up towards
the front. The infantry is put into the reserve and
front line trenches by platoons and companies and
mixed with the old-timers who know all the ropes. In
this way the new comer picks up the routine of trench
work very quickly, and, when the men have all been
broken in, the division gradually takes over its section
234
ON THE BELGIAN BORDER
of front. In the same way the gunners are instructed in
practical artillery work and the men in other branches
of the service are similarly broken in.
There were rumours that the Canadians were
again to move on to the historic Ypres salient and those
of the old brigade were not looking forward to it with
any perceptible amount of enthusiasm. Ypres had
associations which a whole year had not been able to
eradicate. Canadian casualties at this time were very
slight; in fact almost nothing. "Plugstreet" was sup-
posed to be the pleasantest part of the whole line, and
to those who had been to Muskoka it seemed very much
like home, for there were log houses and rustic gates
and all the other accessories found in the wild play-
grounds of northern Ontario.
"Plugstreet" was an easy place to approach since
the woods prevented observation and motor cars could
get right up into the woods itself. While standing in
Ploegsteert woods by the car one day I heard somebody
singing an aria from Faust; the voice was magnificent
and evidently that of a highly trained singer who had
sung in grand opera; I listened with great delight
while he sang with the utmost abandon, and when he
stopped, I watched for the owner of the voice to step
out from among the bushes. The songster proved to
be a cook preparing the evening meal. It was another
example of the cosmopolitan nature of the first Cana-
dian contingent, which had in its ranks men of every
profession and walk in life.
Life was at this time becoming very monotonous
235
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
for our men in the trenches. The mail was the one great
event of the day.
To relieve the monotony of trench life all sorts of
games were devised to pass the time. One unit had an
intensely exciting morning in one of the trenches — rac-
ing frogs. Two frogs had by mistake hopped into the
trench and were captured. Sides were formed and bets
made as to which frog would reach a given point first.
As their leaders with the aid of straws goaded their
respective frogs into greater activity, the woods of
Ploegsteert fairly rang with the cheers of the rival
parties.
Early in April the Canadians again found them-
selves in the Ypres salient, as usual alongside the Bri-
tish guards. At St. Eloi they had had casualties amount-
ing in all to something over 500.
The Australian divisions had arrived on the west-
ern front, and two of them came into our area. In
length of limb and general "ranginess" they greatly
resembled our own westerners, and walked with the
freedom bred of a life in the open. Their usual ques-
tion at first when they met another soldier was, "Have
you been to war or in France?" They got the surprise
of their lives when they found that life on the western
front was far more strenuous than it was on the Galli-
poli peninsula.
The British army was learning by hard knocks
how to do things, and the truth of the old saying was
constantly borne home to one that in the early years of
any great war England paid dearly for her experience
in blood and treasure.
236
ON THE BELGIAN BORDER
The Fokker plane had "thrown a scare" into the
air service, and there was a general demand on the part
of the British public for greater efficiency. As a new
arm of the service it was not considered by Whitehall
with the seriousness it deserved; only the men who saw
planes come over, hover about, and were in consequence
heavily and accurately shelled shortly afterwards,
realized what the command of the air meant. The air
tangle, and the inadequacy of the air service became
such a scandal that Lord Derby and Lord Montague
resigned from the air board as a protest against the way
this branch of the service was being bungled.
As a matter of fact the Fokker was never con-
sidered, by our men, to be a very wonderful machine,
and we quickly evolved types that were superior to it
in every respect.
Nevertheless these were bad days on our front, and
for a while as a result of the enemy's air superiority we
were bombed with great regularity. At Canadian
corps headquarters, where we dined with Generals
Alderson and Burstall one night after our own town
had been bombed, they were very much interested as
they had occupied that town for several months, and
each officer wanted to know whether his former billet
had been struck.
The same night German planes bombed Canadian
headquarters fairly heavily, and also some of the camps
and hospitals (the hospitals were all marked with huge
red crosses on the roof). During the same period the
enemy shelled towns, camps and roads far back from
the front line area, making life in the war area on the
237
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
whole very uncertain and very uncomfortable. It was
necessary to visit many places under cover of darkness,
so accurate was the German observation and shell fire
during the day time.*
For example : one Sunday morning we travelled
from Armentieres to Ploegsteert by a road which in
spots could be seen from the German lines, though
screened by green canvas at such places. Just before
we entered Ploegsteert village we were in full view of
the enemy for a short distance. Instead of passing right
through the long village street as I had intended we
stopped for a minute to look at a well which was being
used as a source of drinking water. As we started
forward shells began to spray the road at the far end
of the village at the very moment when we ourselves
would have arrived had we gone right on. Naturally
we changed our course and turned off at right angles
towards home, while heavy shelling of the town con-
tinued.
Half a mile out of the village we met a civilian
with his wife and little six year old girl, all dressed in
their Sunday clothes, jogging along in a two wheeled
cart to their home in Ploegsteert village, which was
still being shelled. Why people should apparently dis-
count death as some of these civilians seemed to do,
passed our powers of comprehension; it never ceased
to be an astonishing thing to me.
There was great air activity during that period on
the part of the Bosches and with a reason. We knew
*Our men have since been astonished at the wonderful view of our
lines obtained from the Messines — Wytschaete ridge.
238
ON THE BELGIAN BORDER
that they were ready for another gas attack, for our
artilley had burst a tank in the German trenches and
the yellow fumes of chlorine gas had been identified.
A German gas bag used for getting the wind drift was
also brought in to us for examination, showing that the
enemy was awaiting a favorable opportunity.
As I sat out in our garden in Bailleul one evening
at the end of April reading "The Morals of Marcus
Ordeyne," three aeroplanes like great birds volplaned
slowly down from the clouds — coming home to roost —
until they were within 100 feet of the ground, just clear-
ing the house tops as they dropped into their nesting
ground on the other side of the town. I could see the
pilots quite plainly.
In that brick-walled garden, full of rose bushes
in leaf, I sat and looked at the cherry trees in early
blossom, and thoughts came to me of other gardens
away back in Canada, where I had spent many an hour
in the gloaming, while real birds and bats flitted about
across the sky. I leaned over to breathe the perfume of a
white jonquil and a thrill of emotion swept over me
and almost made me dizzy — for the odour was one I
had not met with for a long, long time. This variety
of jonquil my father used to grow at the lake, and in
the spring of the year on which he died some of the
bulbs planted with his own hands were in bloom when
we made our first trip up there; they had seemed like
a sweet message from the dead.
I went to bed that night very homesick, wishing
that the Kaiser was in Hades and the war was over.
For a long time I could not get to sleep and an agitated
239
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
rapping on my door made me start up quickly from a
restless slumber. My window was open and the chok-
ing fumes of chlorine poured into the room while
Madame rapped away, exclaiming, "Monsieur the
Colonel; the asphyxiating gas has arrived." I slam-
med the window to, soaked a muffler in water and
wrapped it over my mouth and nose while robed in a
dressing gown, I hastened down stairs. My own gas
mask, carefully placed in a corner, had been moved,
and, in the dark, I could not find it. I gathered the
four women into the inner kitchen and made them
breathe through towels wrung out in a solution of
ammonium carbonate, which we were fortunate enough
to find, while we excluded as much gas as possible by
wet towels placed over the cracks in the doors.
It was a most unpleasant experience. As we were
nearly seven miles from the German line, it was quite
evident that the gas must have been discharged in tre-
mendous quantity to have reached us in the strength it
did. I had visions of the Germans discharging gas for
hours and killing everything that breathed for miles
back of the lines. It was a horrible sensation to realize
that you had been caught like rats in a cellar and would
slowly die of asphyxiation. The gas crept in through
the doors, and it was quite impossible to breathe except
through towels saturated with the chemical solution.
I wondered how the Germans would feel about it when
they came over through a country devoid of all life and
whether they would take the trouble to bury all the
women and children and dead animals.
Breathing was steadily becoming more and more
240
ON THE BELGIAN BORDER
difficult, when suddenly the door bell rang. One of the
girls insisted on going to answer it, and quickly came
back to report that a neighbor had called to see whether
they were all right, and that the gas cloud had passed.
Never did fresh air taste so sweet to me, and I wasted
no time in sending to a hospital for a set of masks so as
to be prepared should another gas cloud arrive.
The streak of gas that crossed our section of the
town must have drifted along some depression in the
surface of the country, for a good many people in other
parts of the town, particularly where the windows had
been closed, were not greatly inconvenienced by it.
The gas was strong enough to kill all the young
foliage of the roses and other plants in our garden,
while closer to the front a number of horses were poi-
soned by it. Several hundred soldiers of British regi-
ments were gassed and the Germans, under cover of the
gas cloud, raided the British trenches in an endeavour
to locate and blow up certain mine shafts. That they
did not succeed was shown recently when these same
mines on the Wytschaete ridge blew both Germans and
trenches far on the way towards the eternal stars.
Other gas attacks launched by the Germans the
same night failed to achieve any results; and in one
section they managed to gas themselves badly. We
reported the gas to be chlorine, and the post mortems
of gassed soldiers carried out by Major Rankin, blood
tests by myself to exclude other possibilities, and evi-
dence obtained elsewhere, all indicated that the gas
employed had been chlorine.
The New Zealand division which had come into
241
17
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
our area, held the line in front of Armentieres. A small
epidemic of suspected dysentery in that division took us
through that town frequently, and we found it almost
completely deserted. The Huns shelled it almost daily
and had made the place almost untenable for civilians,
though, as usual, a number of them hung on and did a
fairly good business.
The staff of our laboratory had been reduced from
three officers to two, and after a good deal of discussion,
Major Rankin dropped out at his own earnest request
and was detailed to the Canadian Corps to train for
the position of D.A.D.M.S. To celebrate the occasion
he gave us a little dinner, and invested heavily in
nectarines, strawberries and peaches from the graperies.
The occasion was only slightly marred by the popping
cork of a champagne bottle crashing through a skylight
and bringing down a shower of glass on the Cap.'s head,
which bled profusely.
One evening after dinner as we sat with French
windows opened wide to the warm evening air of late
spring, puffing idly at our cigars, a most beautiful bird
song burst upon our ears — a song that made us stare at
one another in amazement; we had never heard its like
before. It might be described as a bird fantasia — the
notes covered a wide range of sounds and the effect was
beautiful. Captain Ellis walked quietly down the
garden path and got close to the cherry tree from which
the trills and lilts continued to pour, but could see
nothing. Mile. C — said it was a chantresse (songster)
but that did not give us much idea of what it was like.
Every morning and evening after that, this indefa-
242
ON THE BELGIAN BORDER
tigable songster made music for us (or rather for his
mate, probably sitting on her eggs) in the cherry tree
on the other side of the wall. How we enjoyed listen-
ing to it! Many a time we tried to locate the singer in
his leafy home, but in vain ; the nearest we ever came to
it was once when we saw a branch shake as the bird
hopped to another limb.
One morning the brilliant bursts of song were lack-
ing, and we missed them. Just before we left for the
laboratory Mademoiselle C — brought in a rat trap to
show us, and there caught in it, was our little shy singer
with grey dappled breast, its head crushed by the cruel
steel spring. Evidently in search of food in the early
morning it had hopped on the trigger of the trap and
met its fate. It was one of the little tragedies continu-
ally occurring in nature; to the little bird-wife waiting
in the cherry tree it was just as great a tragedy as would
be the death of her husband to the woman waiting at
home.
This was an eventful period in the history of the
war for Canadians. A heavy bombardment all along
the line from La Bassee to Ypres forecasted something
unusual. My diary, unusually voluminous for the day
of June 3rd, shows that I was greatly impressed by the
occurrences of that day and had taken the trouble to
write down my impressions at length. The following
extract is a word for word copy from my diary :
June 3rd. — Awakened at 2.15 a.m. by agitated fir-
ing of anti-aircraft guns. Heard planes overhead and
big guns going. Listened for a while and got partly
dressed and went down into garden. Two British
243
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
planes going up — no Bosches visible. Quite clear at
2.30 a.m. with low summer clouds. Slept till 8. Asked
Rankin and Ellis at breakfast about bombardment; they
hadn't heard it. Rad said 18 British ships sunk and
Canadians had lost trenches — laughed at him.
Sanitary officer 24th Division called re beer used
at Dranoutre taken from becque % m^e below Locre
sewage outfall. Also discussed lime treatment of sew-
age effluent, grease traps, etc., etc.
French paper at noon said British and German
fleets had been engaged.
After dinner went with Ellis to Abeele, called on
paymaster for money. Major said Canadians had
had 2,000 casualties. The Germans started a 5-hour
bombardment at 9 a.m., June 2nd. General Mercer and
Brig. General Vic Williams were making an inspection
at the time and both wounded ; were last seen at 3 p.m.
going into a dug-out, which was taken afterwards by
Germans, and have not been seen since — probably cap-
tured. Lt.-Col. Tanner, O.C. Field Ambulance, badly
wounded. In counter-attacks by 3rd Canadian Divi-
sion— a good deal of trenches recovered — not all.
Attack made on 3rd Division — General Lipsett now
in command — and part of 1st division. 14th, 15th, and
10th Battalions, 1st Division, made counter-attack this
morning — Toronto Highlanders did particularly well.
4th and 5th C.M.R.'s said to have lost 500 each. Last
official bulletin about fleet — Queen Mary, Invincible
and Indefatigable — battle cruisers, sunk. Also 3
cruisers sunk and one abandoned ; 6 torpedo boats sunk
and 6 missing. Germans lost one sunk and one
244
ON THE BELGIAN BORDER
damaged. Evidently the British fleet was done in bad-
ly, but the reason cannot be explained until all the facts
are known.
Went to No. 10 C.C.S. to see if Ellis' brother of
the 7th Battalion had been wounded — no news of him
but arranged to have any information telephoned, and
that he be sent for by Captain Stokes — saw the
spirochaete of epidemic jaundice. General Porter
there, and chatted to him for a minute.
On the way back we stopped at Mt. Rouge and
saw the German lines.
It was a beautiful clear day with a tang in the air
like late September.
From our little observation point on the top of
Mt. Rouge we could see for miles on all sides. Over in
front lay Mt. Kemmel, bristling with guns but not one
visible with the field glasses. Beneath us and between
us and Kemmel, on the road that runs from Bailleul to
Ypres, nestled the little village of Locre, with its white
walled cottages and red tiled roofs.
To the left of Kemmel the sun made prominent the
ruins of Wytschaete — a village in the German lines.
Just beneath Wytschaete one could see the German
trenches, two lines of them, which showed like brick
red seams in the earth and ran up over and along the
crest of the Wystchaete ridge, which itself ran towards
St. Eloi and Ypres. Between these German trenches
and our own was a sandy waste — no man's land —
scarred and churned by untold numbers of shells. Even
the forest patches in this region were dead and slivered
by rifle and shell.
245
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
To the left of Wytschaete one could see great bursts
of brown, black, greenish and white smoke over a width
of country perhaps % of a. mile and a length of 2
miles. It was here that the 3rd and 1st Canadian Divi-
sions were fighting with the Huns for mastery. Per-
haps as we watched these bursting shells were killing
our own friends.
The region of St. Eloi was cut off by the Scherpen-
berg Mountain and to the left of that again we could
see with wonderful clearness the ruins of Ypres. As
we watched, great clouds of dust went up at intervals
from the square. The tower of St. Martin's Church,
and the tower of the Cloth Hall to the right were
clearly distinguishable.
To the left of Ypres again we could see spires of
towns, and one town far away was right on the sea we
were told, probably Dunkirk. To the right of Kemmel
was the ruined tower of Messines in the German lines;
to the left of that the smoking chimneys of Armentieres
now also somewhat battle scarred, and away beyond it
and a little to the left the City of Lille.
Thus we could see from Dunkirk on the sea to
Lille, that fair city, well inland in northern France,
and could follow the battle line from Pilken beyond
Ypres to La Bassee. In that line we could actually see
the flashes and shell bursts in Ypres, St. Eloi, Wytschaete
and near Levantie. It was a wonderful day, and a view
never to be forgotten.
It was a bitter day for us, and we had a bad even-
ing discussing our hard knocks.
At 10.30 p.m. Ellis came back from the lab, with
246
ON THE BELGIAN BORDER
the latest report of the sea battle which has worried us
so much :
LOSSES.
British. German.
3 Battle Cruisers sunk : 2 Dreadnaughts sunk.
Queen Mary. 1 Battle Cruiser sunk.
Indomitable. 3 Light Cruisers sunk.
Indefatigable. 6 Destroyers sunk.
3 Cruisers sunk : 1 Submarine rammed and sunk.
Warrior. 2 Battle Cruisers badly damaged.
Black Prince. 3 other ships damaged.
Defence. 1 Zeppelin destroyed.
8 Destroyers and Torpedo Boats
sunk.
Hooray ! even if above is not true."
The corrected report of the battle of Jutland was
confirmed later and caused profound relief in the army.
Why such a report had been allowed to pass and remain
uncontradicted so long could not be fathomed. Those
were very black days for the army in the field and many
a man died with despair in his heart, convinced that
what had been the greatest fact in his whole life — the
invincibility of the British Fleet — was a myth. The
British nation will take a long time to forgive the Ad-
miralty for that unnecessary delay.
In that dark period the army in France, with the
fleet destroyed, saw its lines of communication being
cut, and the end in sight. I ran across Lt.-Col.
(Canon) Scott, C.M.G., in a rest station the day after
the correct report had arrived. His eye was blacked,
his nose skinned, and his wrist sprained and he present-
ed all the signs of having been in a fight, though as a
matter of fact he had fallen from his horse while suf-
247
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
fering from the effects of anti-typhoid inoculation.
Notwithstanding his condition he had slipped away
from the rest station that night and had gone up to
the Canadian area to spread the good news of the naval
battle in order to cheer up our men who were going into
action. A German barrage had prevented him from
getting up to the front line but he managed to have the
good news telephoned in to the trenches. That was
characteristic of the unselfish work of Canon Scott; he
never spared himself and his thought was always
for "the boys in the trenches." He is a great soul.
The Canadian losses in the St. Eloi battle were
said to be about 6,000 and there was little glory for
anybody and a good deal of prestige lost by many in
that affair
The death of Lord Kitchener off the Orkney
Islands had startkd the world and all wondered what
catastrophe would happen next. The loss of Kitchener
was greatly deplored by the French people who looked
on Kitchener, the inscrutable, as a great mystery and one
to admire and marvel at
One day at Boulogne returning from leave after
an uneventful channel crossing with some sort of Rus-
sian delegation, we had picked up our grips and started
for the gangway, when the strains of a band on the
dock became audible, and we could see a group of
French officers waiting to meet the Russian delegates
who were slowly filing down the gang plank. The
band slowly played the Russian national anthem, and
we all dropped our baggage and stood to attention. As
the strains died away we again seized our grips and
248
ON THE BELGIAN BORDER
began to push forward when the band struck up the
Marseillaise and again we dropped everything and
stood to attention. After an interval of about ten
minutes the last bars of the tune died away and for the
third time we seized our things only to hear the strains
of the British national anthem rising on the air. Again
we dropped our stuff and smartly came to the salute
like good loyal subjects though we heartily wished that
the delegation had gone by the Archangel route, for we
felt certain that the band would play the national an-
thems of Belgium, Japan, Serbia and Italy. However,
like most things, it came to an end and we filed off
after a delay of what had seemed to be a good half
hour. It is strange how we were all keen to get back
to the front to the work which we got so fed up with and
would sometimes give the whole world to get away
from.
The summer of 1916 was the period of the battle
of the Somme and most of our interests hinged on that
offensive. At the beginning of July the British began
their big advance to the south and the fighting in our
area consisted largely of trench raids, artillery bom-
bardments, gas attacks, aeroplane raids and other events
incidental to trench warfare.
A spectacular show occurred when the offensive
began and the enemy observation balloons, hitherto
practically unmolested, were attacked by our airmen
with some new incendiary device with the result that
nine were brought down in a few minutes in flames and
the others were quickly hauled to earth to remain there
for many weeks. Only occasionally during the succeed-
249
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
ing months would a captive balloon ascend and then
would quickly disappear on the approach of one of our
planes.
Pens for German prisoners were under course of
construction all along the front — a most satisfactory
procedure from the psychological standpoint, as it
seemed to express confidence in what the future was
to bring. The capacity of the hospitals had also been
increased from 540 to 1,000 beds, which also indicated
business.
The Canadians were still in the salient side by side
with the Guards and the latter used to cheer "the right-
ing Canucks" as they called them, as they went into the
trenches. The only regret of the Canadians at that
time was that they did not have the "Immortal Seventh
Division" on their other side.
An attack by the Australians on our front resulted
in casualties amounting to several thousands and the
hospitals for many days afterwards were filled with
cases of gas gangrene due to the men lying out too long
in the open with infected wounds.
Divisions from our area would move out and go
south to the Somme while battered divisions from the
Somme front would drift up into our area. Among
these was the Ulster division whose fife and drum
band came marching gaily up the street, nearly
every musician wearing a German cap. A few days
later the south of Ireland division came up and the
two divisions occupied the line side by side. Needless
to say they fraternized in the best spirit while out of the
line just as they supported one another while in it.
250
ON THE BELGIAN BORDER
In the second week in August the first Canadian
division came out of the salient into the training area
preparatory to going down to the Somme, and the other
Canadian divisions soon followed.
During this period a Canadian medical officer,
noted for his self-possession, was proceeding along the
road and came across a private soldier who had been
hurt in an accident. At the same time a car stopped
and a young lieutenant stepped out to see whether he
could be of use. The M.O. examined the injured man
and said to the lieutenant rather brusquely, "Is that your
car?" The lieutenant said that it was. "Well we'll
just put this man in and take him to the hospital in
Hazebrouk if you don't mind," said the M.O. and with-
out waiting for permission helped the injured man into
the car. The lieutenant seemed to be quite agreeable
and they drove to Hazebrouk several miles away.
The M.O. thoroughly enjoyed that drive; all along
the road officers and men saluted the car deferentially
and the M.O. acknowledged these salutes most gra-
ciously. Somehow or other the world seemed to be
peculiarly affable to the M.O. and by the time Haze-
brouk was reached he simply beamed on everybody.
As they drove up to the hospital there happened
to be a General and a Colonel chatting to the officer
commanding the hospital at the front door. Much to
the MXX's surprise the General saluted first but as he
made haste to acknowledge the salute, he observed that
the General was smiling at the lieutenant beside him.
Then, only, did it dawn upon the M.O. that the lieuten-
ant was the Prince of Wales and his confusion was so
251
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
great that he could never afterwards recall just what
he did for the next three or four hours. He was heard
to say that night that the Prince of Wales was "an
awful decent chap and a thorough gentleman" and also
that the Burgundy wine in Hazebrouk was of very
inferior quality.
The work of the laboratory was very heavy from
routine work of various sorts and an attempt to stamp
out diphtheria from a Scotch division. Much the same
sort of experiences as have been related elsewhere were
encountered and we had entered upon the fed-up stage
of life at the front. It needed something of extraor-
dinary interest to rouse one's interest to any unusual
degree.
At the beginning of September the three Canadian
Divisions were en route to the Somme, while the newly
arrived 4th Canadian Division came up to take over
part of the line near the Ypres Salient.
The British and French were doing well and tak-
ing many prisoners on the Somme, as were the Russians
on their front while the Roumanians began their offen-
sive and swept far over the country much to the horror
of the critics and everybody else.
There was great elation on the day of the big offen-
sive on the Somme when the British first used "tanks."
I shall never forget the thrill I had when we read a
telegram received at one of the headquarters repeating
a wireless message from an aeroplane observer to the
effect that he could see a tank wobbling into a village
followed by cheering troops. It was the first time that
engines of warfare had led the way to an attacking
252
ON THE BELGIAN BORDER
force and the picture of the enemy fleeing before these
new engines of terror spouting fire and destruction and
rolling over trenches and machine gun emplacements,
while cheering Tommies followed in their wake, will
never be forgotten. We envied the air men their view
that day and thought of how they must have thrilled
at the sights below them.
We had been ordered to get out of our quarters in
the school on October the first. After some difficulty
we decided to build a hut for laboratory quarters and
selected a field near the British isolation hospital. The
view from the site selected, overlooking the rolling
fields, with the Mt. de Cats surmounted by its mon-
astery to the left, and Mt. Rouge to the right, is about
as fine as anything I have seen in Belgium.
With the aid of a carpenter from the Canadian
casualty clearing station, we built the hut, 40 feet by
20 feet, ourselves, and when I left for England early
in October, it was a great satisfaction to feel that we
were established in what a Surgeon-General subsequent-
ly stated to be "an ideal field laboratory."
On the way from what proved to be my last stay in
France, we visited the Somme area and saw some of our
old comrades. The Canadians had on the previous day
suffered heavy casualties in trying to take Regina trench
and we passed homeward through the tent covered area
behind Albert with the knowledge that more of our
old school friends were at that moment lying out wound-
ed and dead in no man's land.
As we drove along the moonlit road from Albert on
the way to Boulogne we passed company after company
253
ON THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT FIGHT
of soldiers trudging along towards the front; they did
not sing. It was the 4th Canadian Division going into
action — about to experience that great adventure of
battle for which they had trained so long and had come
so far to obtain.
Farther along the road we could hear away in the
distance a song; we could not distinguish the words but
we knew that soon we would hear "Pack up your
troubles in your own kit bag and Smile, Smile, Smile 1"
They were Canadians coming out of the trenches.
254
INDEX
PAGE
Air service 237
battle 88
Alderson, General 94, 237
Advanced Dressing Station 128
Ambulance, work of . 129
Field, Canadian, No. 3 104, 108
Artillery, Canadian, in billets 22
Shelling by .158
Aubers ridge, battle of 118
Australians, arrival of, from Gallipoli 236
B
Band, British Guards . 173
Indian 174
Bailleul, garden in 116,240
Balbaud, Professor Paul 121
Barrows, Roman, Salisbury Plains ....... 27
Battalion, first Canadian, .117
third Canadian (Toronto) 70, 115
Winnipeg rifles 7
work of medical officers of 127
Baths, divisional 146, 147
Bird life, Salisbury Plains 25
the nameless 242
Bombs, on Bailleul 233
on Canadian Headquarters 237
on Merville 72
Bournemouth 52
255
INDEX
PAGE:
Boyd, Capt .104
Brielen 91
British officers 66
Buckingham Palace, investiture at 230
Burstall, General (C.B.) . ... 94,237
Canadian contingent, first, leaving Gaspe 5
arrival at Plymouth ... 9
Salisbury Plain . . 10
sickness among 19
Canadian division, first, review by King 29
after Neuve Chappelle .... 70
sports of 74
German attack upon .... 97
Canadian division, second, arrival in France 123
Canadians in Ypres Salient, 1916 250, 252
Canadian graveyard 176
laboratory arrival in France 65
work of (See 'Laboratory').
Casualty clearing station, work of a 128
Chalons-sur-Marne 206
Champagne, visit to 205
Channel, crossing the British 232
Cartwright, Lt 234
Chlorine gas used by Germans 94
treatment of water (See 'Water') .... 140, 155
Cole, Capt. Cooper 234
Cock fighting in France 73
Creeks, pollution of 147
D
Disease, (See 'Epidemics').
"Carriers" of 139, 142
256
INDEX
PAGE
Dressing Station, Canadian Advanced 99
Dysentery, suspected epidemic of 157
Ellis, Major Arthur .68,107,164,232,242,245
Epidemics, how spread 136
lack of, in British Army . . . . . . . 134
F
Festubert, battle of 118, 166
Fire fete of Merville ........... 180
Flowers in Spring, England 57
France . 67
Experience with Parisian flower-girl .... 194
in Bailleul garden 239
in Merville garden 121
French artillery 109
front, visit to 205
Foch, General 106
Foster, Col. (C.B.) (Surgeon-General) ...... 113
Funeral, a Canadian Soldier's 116
Gas, original, attack on Canadians, April 22, 1915 ... 93
attack by Germans, Spring, 1916 240
on Belgians, April, 1915 Ill
masks, suggested use of 107
poison, nature of 94, 95, 107
work of laboratory on 115
Gaspe basin 5
Gooderham, Capt . 234
Graves, Canadian 176
257
18
INDEX
H
PAGE
Haig, General Sir Douglas 170
Hardy, Lt.-Col. (DS.O.) 101
Hayter, Lt.-Col. (D.S.O.) 234
Haywood, Mayor Alf. (M.C.) 71,116
Highlanders, Canadian, at Ypres 96
(Toronto) 115
Hospital on Salisbury Plain 28
French Canadian, Paris 199
at French front 205
barges 131
Hotel, Continental, Paris, 1916 196
Lotti, Paris, 1916 1%
de 1'Angleterre Beuvais, 1916 190
Savoy, London, 1915-16 36
Hutchison, Capt. John 71
Hughes, General Sir Sam 2, 35
Hygiene work of laboratory 154
I
Institute for maimed soldiers, Paris 207
blind soldiers, Paris 208
Indian band concert, France 174
(Lahore) division 107
Inoculation against Typhoid in Canadians 24
Investiture, a royal . 230
J
Jutland, battle of, 244, 247
K
Kemmel, hill of 245
Kipple, Sgt., description by 15
Kitchener, death of Lord 247
258
INDEX
PACK
Kirkpatrick, Major 76
Klotz, Capt. Herbert 30
L
Laboratory, Canadian Mobile 253
work of Canadian Mobile . . 123, 152, 154, 159
La Gorgue 79
Laventie 80
Larkhill
Laundries, waste from army 147
Leicester square, 1914-15 37
Lice and typhus fever 144
Lipsett, General (C.M.G.) 244
London, 1914 32
Locre 245
M
Maclaren, Major 100
Macpherson, Surgeon-General 126, 169
Malaria, work of Rankin on 163
Mavor, Major Wilfred (D.S.O., M.C.) 119
McBrien, Lt.-Col., (D.S.O.) 234
McPherson, Lt.-Col., (C.M.G.) 87
Mitchell, Lt.-Col, (C.M.G.) 100
Milk, use of, in army 141
Medical service, British organization 126, 138
officer's duties 127
specialists, work of 133
stores, advanced depot 133
Mercer, Major-General (C.B.) . . . 70,110,117,233,234
Mignault, Lt.-Col 199
Moroccan troops (French colonials) 96
Mosquitoes and Malaria . 143
Muntz, Capt. Jerry 71
259
INDEX
N
PAGE
New Zealand division, arrival of . 241
Opera in Paris, 1916, ........... 192
Orbeliani, Prince 202
P
Paris at night, March, 1916 195
demi mondes . . . . 193
morality of 194
women and dress 198
Montmartre district 191
opera in 192
Pasteur Institute, Paris 204
Piccadilly circus, 1914-15 37
Plague, how spread in armies 149
Ploegsteert 235-238
Prince of Wales 251
Poperinge «... .105,107,111,113,114
Pollution of water (See 'Water').
Q
Quaker search party ........... 142
Queen Mary battle cruiser 8
R
Rankin, Lt.-Col. Allan .... 68,93,97,112,163,232,242
Rats, destruction of, in army 204
carry plague 149
story of 150
260
INDEX
PAGE
Red Cross, Canadian, in Paris 203
Rawlinson, General Sir Henry 106
Refugees 98, 102, 165
Rennie, General Robt 70, 76
Roberts, Lord, funeral of . 42
Robertson, Capt. E 99
Rowland, Capt. Sydney • . 62
Ryerson, Capt. George 71
Russian delegation 249
S
Salisbury Plain, Old Sarum ».,;;. 26
Silver Grill . . 47
Stonehenge 27
white horse 26
arrival at 10
description of . . 11
bird life 25
Sanitary Commission of War Allies 189, 200
Sanitary section, organization of . . . f . . .130
Sanitary officers 132
methods employed in field 137
Scrimger, Capt, (V.C.) .......... 92
Serbia, Prince of 197
Scott, (Canon) Lt.-Col. Frederick George, (C.M.G.) . 86,247
St. Jean 88
St. Denis 210
St. Eloi 246,248
St. Cloud hospital 200
Search party (Quakers) . 142
Sketches, Dirty Jock, etc 184
Sloggett, Sir Arthur 126
Somme, battle of ............ 249-253
261
INDEX
T
PAGE
Tanks 252
Tanner, Lt.-Col 244
Tetanus 153
Typhoid fever among refugees 165
absence of, in British army 135
Typhus fever in Serbia . 144, 145, 201
U
Ulster division 252
V
Valcartier camp . 1, 3
Verdun battle, Paris during 191
Vlamertinge 104
Van Straubenzie, Major 70
W
War office, London, 1914 39
Warren, Capt. Trumbull 91
Water carts 155
chlorination of . 140, 155
mobile filters 141
supply 140, 157
purification, control of 154, 156
value of analysis 156
Williams, General Vic 244
Wickens, Major Bert 71
Wieltze 88,98,99
Winnipeg battalion 7
Wounded, evacuation of 128
Wytschaete 245
262
INDEX
Y
PAGE
Ypres, city of, April 17, 1915 83
22, 1915 84
description of 84
history of 85
Cloth Hall of 85
second battle of 94, 100, 102, 109, 114
263
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