Brave Battalion (10 page)

Advancing at a fifteen-minute interval behind the gas were the leading German infantry formations. Each man wore a primitive gas mask. There was no resistance in the forward trenches as the men stepped in their jackboots over the bodies of the dead and dying whose “faces were discoloured and contorted in grimaces of agony.”
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Within an hour the Germans had penetrated a full mile into the heart of the salient.

The first sign the Canadian Scottish had of the disaster playing out on their left was the sudden appearance of a stream of civilian refugees pouring “down the road, carrying with them their small personal belongings wrapped in bundles and then over the canal bridges came the French soldiers retiring, first by ones and twos and latterly a continuous stream.”
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The French troops were “breathless, bareheaded, without rifles or equipment.” Mixed in among the fleeing infantry were French and Belgian artillery limbers, “without guns, the drivers holding each other up as if they were wounded. The horses were being galloped amongst the refugees regardless of consequences.” Canadian Scottish officers rushed to stop some of the men, trying to get information, but they were so panicked it was useless. “The infantry showed signs of acute distress and fear. They came back at the trot, coughing and spluttering, and, although shouted at, would not stop running. At any attempt to halt their retreat they threw up their hands, and between coughs, as they passed, gasped out, ‘
Asphyxié, Asphyxié!
'”
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Realizing the Canadian left flank was likely completely exposed, Leckie issued each man an extra emergency ration and two additional bandoliers containing a hundred rounds of small-arms ammunition. There was no way of knowing where the battalion might be sent or when any re-supply would be possible. For two hours the Canadian Scottish waited and then at 1940 hours received orders to move to brigade headquarters in St. Julien.

Although the direct route passed through St. Jean, the village and its crossroads were being battered by artillery. So the battalion took a roundabout route through la Brique and then on to Wieltje. It was a harrowing journey, shrapnel “bursting over all the roads, and across the parts which were badly shelled we doubled by small parties, escaping with no casualties.” Once through Wieltje, Leckie led his men left off the St. Julien road for a fifteen-minute rest. “Our eyes and nostrils,” Urquhart noted, “began to smart which we could not understand but realized later that it was by reason of the poison gas. It was now a matter of three or four hours after the original attack and we were a good mile and a quarter behind the trenches held by the French before the attack took place.”
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Nobody in the battalion suspected that the physical discomfort they suffered was caused by gas. They had no sense of why their throats were inordinately tight and dry.

At 2200 hours the battalion halted in a small field near brigade headquarters. Reporting to Turner, Leckie learned that his task was to support closely the 10
^th
Battalion of 2
^nd
Canadian Infantry Brigade in an attack aimed at driving the Germans out of a trench immediately south of woods known as Bois des Cuisiniers (later Kitchener's Wood), due west of St. Julien. Having cleared the trench, the two battalions would then recapture the entire wood.
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The localized counterattacks 1
^st
Canadian Infantry Division was mounting to blunt the German offensive were organized spontaneously by Maj.-Gen. Edwin Alderson, for Second Army's command chain was thrown into confusion by the unexpected offensive. At his headquarters in Hazebrouck, Gen. Horace Smith-Dorrien only learned of the attack at 1845 hours, a full hour and forty-five minutes after the gas was released. Communications were in disarray, the German cannonade having so broken telephone lines across the entire front that passage of information ground to a standstill. Consequently, even after word of the offensive reached army headquarters, staff there were still trying to construct an accurate picture of the crisis facing them two hours later. Finally, confirmation was received that the two French divisions immediately adjacent to the Canadians had been driven back from both their first and second defensive lines, had lost all their supporting artillery, and no resistance was being offered anywhere to the east of the Yser Canal. Smith-Dorrien realized the French rout left Second Army's left flank fully exposed everywhere along an 8,000-yard front, except in the area where the Canadians were rapidly trying to stem the German tide. If the Germans quickly exploited the situation by driving into the yawing gap on the army's left they could overrun Ypres and cut off three divisions—including the Canadians.

Fortunately for the Allies, the German offensive had only met good success where the gas had been concentrated on its left flank—elsewhere the French had held firm. On the left, however, the 52nd Reserve Division of the XXVI Reserve Corps had penetrated deeply into the salient and won Pilckem Ridge by 1740 hours and rapidly carried on another mile to gain Mauser Ridge. On the extreme east of the German assault, 51
^st
Reserve Division, after facing a stiff fight for control of Langemarck village, advanced out of it at 1800 hours with the intention to overrun St. Julien. By nightfall this division's forward elements had overrun Bois des Cuisiniers, later renamed Kitchener's Wood, captured four British guns, and established themselves in a trench line about three-quarters of a mile immediately west of St. Julien.
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Alderson, prompted by a series of hand-delivered messages sent by Brig. Richard Turner informing him that the Canadian front was now anchored on St. Julien, had sent an urgent message to 2
^nd
Canadian Infantry Brigade “to hang on and take care of your left.” The brigade's commander, Brig. Arthur Currie, had already grasped the severity of the situation and sent his 10
^th
Battalion to reinforce 3
^rd
Brigade. This enabled Turner to assign it to assaulting the German trench line in front of Bois des Cuisiniers with his Canadian Scottish in support. Currie, a Victoria militiaman instrumental in forming the 50
^th
Gordon Highlanders and who had commanded that regiment's first contingent sent to Valcartier until being promoted to brigadier, displayed the canny grasp for tactics that would eventually propel him to the position as Canada's top soldier in the field. Having provided Turner with desperately needed reinforcement, he concentrated his 7
^th
Battalion in the centre of Gravenstafel Ridge in a move that would further protect his threatened left flank should 3
^rd
Brigade lose control of St. Julien.

Meanwhile, Smith-Dorrien had recognized that the frontage held by the Canadian division's two forward brigades was vital to re-establishing control over the situation. To bolster forces there, he released 1
^st
Canadian Infantry Brigade from its role as divisional reserve and returned it to Alderson's command. The division commander immediately placed the brigade's 2
^nd
and 3
^rd
Battalions directly under Turner's authority.

Realizing that the Canadians were insufficiently strong to turn back the Germans without additional support, Smith-Dorrien reinforced Alderson with the 2
^nd
East York Battalion from 28
^th
British Division and promised him a free hand in both determining how to meet the offensive and calling up additional reinforcements as needed. Consequently, over the following two days, a total of thirty-three battalions would come at various times under Alderson's direct command.

The French also realized that the Canadians were pivotal to countering the German offensive. A liaison officer at Alderson's headquarters pleaded with him to immediately launch a counterattack that could serve to support a planned advance by the Algerian Division to regain Pilckem Ridge. Turner's assault on Bois des Cuisiniers, Alderson decided, would precisely serve this purpose as well as forestalling a German attack on St. Julien.
¹⁹
When Alderson asked for assurance that the Algerians would in fact attack, the liaison officer expressed dismay that there could be any doubt of this. So the Canadian plan developed in ignorance of the fact that the Algerian division had been effectively destroyed. The 10
^th
and 16
^th
Battalions would counterattack unsupported by any matching French effort.
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At 3
^rd
Brigade headquarters, Turner, believing the French attack was about to begin any moment, was anxious to get the assault on the woods going. But he was worried about the fact that the Canadians lacked any experience in night attacks. The risk of the two battalions losing their way or becoming badly entangled with each other during the assault seemed all too likely, so Turner opted to simply have the two units advance one behind the other in a rigid formation. Such attacks were something the Canadians rehearsed so many times during training at Valcartier they could do so blindfolded—or at least on a pitch-black night. The 10
^th
Battalion, Turner decided, would lead “on a frontage of two companies and with distances of 30 yards between lines” and the rest of the companies of the two battalions would follow in precisely the same formation.

The 16
^th
Battalion lined up 30 yards behind the 10
^th
with its No. 2 Company, under Captain William Rae, forward on the left and No. 4 Company, under Captain John Geddes, the right. Precisely 30 yards behind, Captain George Ross's No. 1 Company was on the left and Captain Cecil Merritt's No. 3 Company the right.
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Together the two battalions numbered about 1,500 men, divided neatly into eight measured lines each of which would go forward with its men so closely aligned that their shoulders almost brushed. Just thirteen guns from four Canadian and British artillery batteries were available to support the hasty attack.

Assembled in their rigid lines, the two battalions stood in the darkness adjacent to a small farm called Mouse Trap Farm a short distance from brigade headquarters. Here, Turner's second-in-command, Lt.-Col. Garnet Hughes, walked up to give Leckie and his 10
^th
Battalion counterpart, a tough Calgary rancher named Lt.-Col. Russell Boyle, last-minute instructions. The two battalion commanders congratulated Hughes on his thirty-fifth birthday, which most of the officers at brigade headquarters had been celebrating as the German offensive started. Hughes, who was Minister of Militia and Defence Sam Hughes's son, pointed dramatically toward the forest, advised them to follow the North Star, and then ordered them to advance when ready. While Hughes was giving his instructions, several 10
^th
Battalion officers had been consulting their topographical maps and realized that 300 yards southwest of the woods stood Oblong Farm, which was likely in German hands. They asked Boyle to consider detaching at least a platoon to clear the farm to ensure it could not be used by the Germans to bring machine-gun fire against the Canadian right flank. Boyle brushed aside the advice. Instead, he turned to his men and yelled: “We have been aching for a fight and now we are going to get it.”
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Leckie offered no rhetoric. In his usual conversational voice, Leckie simply told the Canadian Scottish to shed their packs and greatcoats and then fix bayonets. Everyone recognized the import of this order. They were “for it” and would be fighting with cold steel. As the minutes stretched, a solitary figure walked through the ranks shaking hands with each man he passed. This was Canon Frederick Scott, the 3
^rd
Brigade's beloved fifty-three-year-old chaplain. “A great day for Canada, boys! A great day for Canada, boys!” he declared. Close by, a field battery fired a single round every five minutes into the wood to conceal the sounds of the infantry forming up. Then, at 2345 the Canadians advanced into the open ground that stretched between eight hundred and a thousand yards to the edge of the wood.
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