Brave Battalion (15 page)

At 0200 hours on May 21, the 13
^th
Battalion (Royal Highlanders of Canada) began relieving the two Canadian Scottish companies and, at dawn, they marched to Indian Village. Here the rest of the battalion had listened anxiously through the night to the fierce fight. When the two companies marched in, Urquhart was shocked at how cut up they were, “No. 3 only having 56 men left and No. 1 [Company] about 85.” Captain Don Moore, Pickton-Ward, and Lt. Gordon MacKenzie were dead. Peck, Lt. Arthur Morton, and Lt. Andrew Gray wounded. “The fellows seemed all done but the work accomplished was immense.” Urquhart was saddened by how Pickton-Ward met his fate. “Poor Ward,” he wrote. “Body was buried by Coldstreams.” The battalion quartermaster knew what was needed and Urquhart heartily agreed. “Gave a good dose of rum to men and then they had a sleep. It was a terrible strain on them. You could see they were simply done.”
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In less than two weeks since the slaughter at Ypres, the battalion had again been shredded. Three officers dead, another three wounded. Sixty-eight men killed and 203 wounded for a casualty toll of 277.
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The Canadian Scottish moved immediately to new duties, alternately standing in reserve in the area of Essars or putting in trench duty east of Givenchylez-la-Bassée. Here they remained while the spring of 1915 gave way to a hot summer. Although the trenches were by no means safe and each deployment to the front yielded casualties, the passing weeks gave opportunity for the battalion to slowly nurse its wounds and heal again.

The 16
^th
Battalion was far from alone in the heavy casualties suffered for no gain during the Festubert offensive. Over the course of five separate assaults on as many days 1
^st
Canadian Division had advanced a mere 600 yards at a cost of 2,468 casualties. This, so close on the heels of its losing half its fighting strength at Ypres, created a reinforcement crisis.
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The only good the Canadian Scottish could see in the results of the fighting of early 1915 was one welcome casualty of war. On June 13, Canadian Headquarters ordered the Ross rifle withdrawn from active service and replaced it with the Lee-Enfield that was the standard rifle of all Commonwealth forces except the Canadians. The Can Scots, Urquhart noted, had “found this weapon quite unsuitable … in the field, and many … during the Ypres and Festubert battles, discarded it for the Lee-Enfield. It jammed from heat expansion after the firing of twenty or thirty rounds. Men were to be seen stamping on the bolt in an attempt to open it, cursing bitterly with tears of rage in their eyes, and, finally, when all efforts to draw it had failed, flinging the rifle away.”
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A couple of weeks later another issue of new kit arrived that soon sparked the Battle of the Kilts. Although the decision had been made to supplant the four regimental tartans with one of khaki, it had taken some time for these to be manufactured. When they arrived, it was immediately evident their manufacturer knew nothing of kilts. Depending on whether a man was small or large, the kilts might wrap twice around and drag on boot tops or barely cover his loins. “Lemonade rags,” the men called them.

To a man the Gordons of No. 1 Company refused to wear them, declaring that they “wished to retain their tartan.” Leckie responded by placing some of the company's sergeants under arrest. Then Regimental Sergeant Major David Nelson objected to the kilt as an “outrage” and was also arrested. Finally the khaki issue was withdrawn for modification and the men continued wearing their varying tartans. This resulted in the battalion being garbed in an erratic assortment of clothing as reinforcements arrived, with or without regimental Highland kit, and attempts were made to jury-rig appropriate clothes on the spot or secure them from regimental aid groups back in Canada.
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After one late June parade before Col. Turner, Leckie noted with some despair that, although the parade had gone well, “the diversity of uniforms had a jarring effect!”
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Eventually the matter would be resolved with the battalion agreeing to wear the Mackenzie tartan, although a khaki kilt finally became available that proved suitably constructed. Over time the khaki kilt was commonly used by the Highland troops when not on parade. By that time, however, the Canadian Scottish would have gone through several bloody battles that inflicted such losses that the continued identification of the four companies by regimental affiliation had been rendered moot as men sent to fill the ranks were being drawn at random from reinforcement pools.

- JUNE 1915-MARCH 1916 -

On June 24, 1
^st
Canadian Infantry Division moved about 16 miles from Festubert to the Ploegsteert sector, coming again under British Second Army command and being assigned to Lt.-Gen. Sir W. P. Pulteney's III Corps. The division was assigned a 4,400-yard front between Messines and Ploegsteert, where it would remain for three months of comparative quiet.

The bloodletting of the first five months of 1915 had left both the Allied and German armies so depleted that an uneasy stalemate descended on the Western Front. With Germany removing troops to reinforce the Eastern Front, the British high command felt confident that no major enemy offensives would be forthcoming. This ensured time to strengthen forward defences and rebuild the British Expeditionary Force with little German interference.

Rebuilding proved more troublesome for the Canadian division than was true of its other Commonwealth counterparts due to manpower supply shortages. Minister of Militia and Defence Sam Hughes had neglected to create an efficient system for raising and training reinforcements to replenish the contingent he had so erratically formed in the fall of 1914. The heavy losses of April and May had completely drained the division's entire reserve pool in England, which had only numbered 2,000 men. This forced the dissolution of entire battalions stationed in England as part of the Canadian buildup there that were then fed piecemeal to the division. Even this measure failed to provide enough troops to bring the line battalions up to strength.

Consequently, the Canadian Scottish—like most other battalions—had only half their assigned complement at the beginning of July and Lt.-Col. Robert Leckie decided three larger companies would be more useful than four that were greatly reduced. Amalgamating Nos. 1 and 3 Companies under Captain Frank Morison's command also helped account for a grave shortage of officers, with each company still only assigned one or two apiece. The manpower shortfalls did not mean any lessening in divisional expectations. Each battalion remained responsible for the same trench frontage it would normally be expected to man, which left officers and men trying to fill the shoes of two people. Morale plummeted.
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Fortunately, the Ploegsteert line was “a real rest front” where Germans and Allies maintained an unofficial quasi-truce. Rarely did either side fire artillery or machine guns. But even a so-called rest front remained deadly for the unwary or merely unlucky. Snipers plied their trade, targeting exposed positions or crossing points in the facing breastworks. Both sides vigorously patrolled No Man's Land, seeking prisoners or ambushing enemy patrols. Twenty-nine-year-old Lt. Wallace Chambers, the battalion's machine-gun officer, was fatally shot while on a July 6 reconnaissance in No Man's Land.

Stalking snipers and roving German patrols in the darkness of No Man's Land unsettled reinforcements and made even veterans trigger happy. This led to several incidents where men forgot to challenge troops coming through the wire into the trenches from No Man's Land for the password and shooting first. One officer died bringing a patrol in when the party deployed in the trench specifically to cover its return opened fire from a range of just 10 yards. When another patrol slipped out of the pre-dawn darkness into a trench where Pte. Jules Mondoux was digging a trench with his back turned, the notoriously jumpy veteran spun and struck the lead soldier in the head with the flat of his shovel. Paraded to Company Headquarters, Mondoux said: “I don't know why—I am sorry—but it is my nature.” Thereafter, returning patrols approached cautiously to within calling distance and entered only once assured it was safe to do so. Lt. Hugh Urquhart believed these incidents proved that almost everyone had, in the parlance of the trenches, their “wind up,” or “in ordinary language … were nervous and excitable.”
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It was a happy day on July 23, when a draft of Cameron Highlanders from Winnipeg arrived and the battalion was suddenly brought up to full strength. The day was also one of major command changes for 3
^rd
Canadian Infantry Brigade as Richard Turner was promoted to major general and left to head up 2
^nd
Canadian Infantry Division. This division was readying for deployment to the mainland from England. Brigade command went to Robert Leckie, with John Leckie assuming leadership of the Canadian Scottish and Major Cyrus Peck becoming his second-in-command. Although the two Leckies were extremely close, their personalities differed markedly. Jack, as he was called by friends, had none of Robert's shyness and consequent air of aloofness. Instead, he was dashing and impulsive and thrived on action and adventure. Where his brother was slender, Jack was stocky and possessed of great physical strength. He treated the men like equals and, in the role of battalion second-in-command had won their trust and respect, so that his advancement to command was welcomed. “We liked the way he talked, and the way he walked,” one soldier wrote.

Not a disciplinarian, Jack Leckie would chat cheerfully with men sentenced to field punishment. Coming across a habitual offender, Cpl. Edward Gallagher, scraping mud off boardwalks, Leckie was once heard to say: “Well, my lad, that's better than shovelling snow in Canada.” Gallagher tilted his head to one side, considering the matter, and chuck-led. “Quit your kidding, Major,” he responded.

One soldier was even moved to verse, penning a poem entitled “Major Jack” that appeared in the battalion's trench magazine,
Brazier
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Not everyone was so enamoured of either Leckie. Urquhart had never warmed to the brothers and, at the news of their promotions, confessed to his diary of having “very mixed feelings when of all those men who are now gone and who were treated so badly by him [it's unclear whether he was referring to Robert or Jack Leckie]. Yet there they are lying under the ground and those two who are far inferior to what they were [are] getting all the honours.” August 13, the day after this entry, was Urquhart's birthday and also marked exactly a year since his regiment had mobilized. “I remember wondering then if I should be alive to-day and how it would feel to look back on experiences. I am very thankful at being permitted to be alive and that I was allowed to go through these experiences. I don't know that I have done my best as I should have. Perhaps I will be forgiven for this. Why should I be left alive when such men as John Geddes and Merritt are killed? They made such sacrifices and had so much to live for. Very disappointed at many things and think we have not yet reached climax of misfortunes simply because our inefficiency so great. But the thing to look back on with gratitude is splendid courage and devotion of men.”
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At the company level there were also changes. When the redoubtable Captain William Rae was evacuated ill to England, No. 2 Company passed to Captain Roderick Bell-Irving. Illness also struck Captain Morison, so No. 3 Company was taken over by a newly arrived Cameron named Captain John Hall. The reconstituted No. 1 Company came under the command of Captain Stanley Wood. An American from the Deep South who had enlisted in the Canadian Army as a private at the war's outset, Wood had won a commission and joined the battalion in May 1915. When Captain Victor Hastings was also evacuated with an illness that saw him returned to Canada, Lt. Urquhart was promoted to captain and awarded command of No. 4 Company.

The Canadian Scottish also lost their regimental sergeant major, Davie Nelson, when he was badly wounded on July 11. The only surviving company sergeant major after the spring fighting was Jimmie Kay from No. 4 Company, who moved up to try to fill Nelson's shoes. Kay knew this would be tough, for Nelson had been less the battalion's senior non-commissioned officer than an “institution.” The former Seaforth Highlanders of Canada's sergeant major, Nelson had always provided a steadying hand for the officers and men through every battle.

Although Nelson's combat days were ended by a wound, the RSM had been obviously past his prime—a fact that plagued many of 1
^st
Division's senior officers and non-commissioned officers alike. One of the reasons so many company commanders were falling to critical illnesses was that they were older men. Nelson, who had once been the Seaforth's champion light-weight boxer and had a lean, wiry build, was already “slightly bent” when the battalion reached Europe. Many Can Scots thought nothing but sheer determination of spirit kept the RSM going during the ensuing months of combat and trench duty. Often he was to be seen standing outside his tent, shifting his pipe from side to side in his mouth, gaze fixed toward some faraway point, and nobody could hazard what he was thinking during these moments.
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