Brave Battalion (17 page)

During the late summer of 1915, 1
^st
Division had continued to maintain its presence on the Ploegsteert front even after the Canadian Corps assumed overall responsibility for the 4,400-yard line on September 13. Coinciding with the corps being declared operational, the division's front was actually extended northwestward from Ploegsteert Wood across the Douve River valley to Wulverghem-Messines road. Six days later Second Division began a four-day relief of British formations on the left that broadened the Canadian sector northward three miles to the Vierstraat- Wytschaete road. This road marked the divide between the Canadian area and that of V British Corps. Three divisions of II Bavarian Corps stood opposite the Canadian line where the opposing trenches wriggled along at distances ranging from a maximum of 500 yards to an easy stone's throw apart. From the Messines-Wytschaete spur rising up on the Douve's left bank to intersect the 15-mile-long Messines Ridge the entire Canadian sector lay exposed to enemy observation.
¹²

As Lt.-Gen. Alderson completed his dispositions of Canadian Corps on September 23, he learned that a major Allied offensive was set to begin in just two days' time. Once again the British participated only at French insistence. With the Gallipoli Campaign in the Dardanelles in full swing, the British were overextended to the point that further reinforcing the B.E.F. was predicted to be problematic until early 1916. There was also a grave munitions shortage for both British and French artillery, also not to be rectified until the new year. Until then, the War Office preferred to keep casualties to a minimum by remaining on the defensive. No autumn offensive was anathema to the French, however, and the British government reluctantly acquiesced. Two thrusts would be delivered against either side of a large German salient that reached its apex at Noyon. To the south near Champagne, France's Second and Fourth Armies would advance northward while the French Tenth Army and British First Army drove eastward at Artois—the intent being to cut off and destroy the three German armies holding the Noyon Salient.

The brainchild of Chief of Staff Gen. J.J. Joffre, the offensive rejected the stalemated reality of the Western Front. Joffre believed the salient could be pinched out through a massive commitment of forces—in the French case, fifty-three divisions supported by 5,000 guns.

Although, initially, some ground was gained, a swift German response poured reinforcements into the line and the battle soon conformed to rote until officially cancelled on November 4. The Allied casualty tally was about 60,000 British and 200,000 French, while the Germans lost 150,000. The Noyon Salient remained largely unchanged, with the British having gained only two miles on a two-mile front that left them inside their own difficult-to-sustain salient around Loos, while the French retained only a three-mile penetration at Champagne that left their forward troops dangerously exposed on flats facing ridges in German hands.
¹³
Criticized for his handling of the offensive, particularly a failure to feed in reserves at what was later considered a decisive moment, Field Marshal Sir John French was shunted out of B.E.F. command in favour of Douglas Haig.

Canadian Corps played no part in this offensive except to conduct several demonstrations intended to prevent the facing German divisions being drawn away to reinforce the salient. Largely, the sector remained quiet and the troops were more bothered by October's weather conditions than enemy action. Each day it grew cloudier and colder, with a clammy mist descending after nightfall that clung to the low ground well into the following morning. Then, on October 25, the skies opened and thereafter the rains carried on incessantly, turning the ground into muddy mire and causing streams to flood.

The Douve River overflowed its banks and inundated the valley behind the Canadian front lines, leaving the men there cut off from the rear as the communication trenches either filled with water or collapsed. A link was re-established in 3
^rd
Canadian Infantry Brigade's sector only when engineers built a web of wooden walkways made by interlinking sections of two six-foot lengths of two by fours. These shaky structures lacked handrails and as each man, heavily burdened with packs full of supplies for the front, passed along their length the boards became heavily greased with slippery mud. Soldiers routinely skidded off into the watery and mud-soaked morass—sometimes nearly drowning before being hauled to safety. On the front line, the Canadian Scottish on the battalion's right flank watched helplessly as their breastwork crumbled when the sandbags making up its walls became so sodden they burst and the sand gushed out in a muddy stream. Things were no better on the left flank. The trenches dug where the water table had allowed it were transformed into canals running knee-deep with liquefied mud.

At brigade reserve, in an area designated as Red Lodge, huts erected over the summer months leaked like sieves and the mud caking the floors dried hard as concrete. All roads were lost beneath the shifting flow of silt-laden river water and oozing mud. Only when the battalion was withdrawn to the divisional reserve area with its leak-proof huts were the men ever to get dry. The closing weeks of 1915 were largely spent by the Canadians in fruitless efforts to create workable drainage systems.
¹⁴

Throughout the fall and early winter, the Canadians and Germans routinely harassed each other almost daily with artillery fire. Snipers stalked the unwary and nightly patrols prowled No Man's Land looking for weaknesses in the opposing defences. Barely a day passed when the Canadian Scottish were in the line that the war diarist failed to record that at least one man had been wounded or killed. The journey to and from the front was looked upon as being even more treacherous. On December 4, Urquhart wrote that—there being no usable communication trenches—the men had “to come back [by] the dreary road overland across the Douve. Fell into various ditches and got soaking wet.” The narrow bridge spanning the river lacked handrails and the water roaring underneath was clearly “very deep.” With the men moving so slowly across such open ground, Urquhart feared being spotted by the Germans. Caught by artillery fire the Canadian Scottish, he knew, would “certainly have heavy casualties.”
¹⁵

Each battalion spent five days in the trenches and then five days in the rear. The Canadian Scottish generally rotated duty with the 48
^th
Highlanders while the Royal Montreal Regiment and the Royal Highlanders of Canada did likewise. This was not an altogether happy arrangement for the Can Scots, as they felt the 48
^th
Highlanders seldom worked on trench maintenance and improvement during their stints at the front. “As usual 15
^th
did no work,” Urquhart confided to his diary in one of all too many similar comments.
¹⁶

The 48
^th
Highlanders appeared no more impressed by the Canadian Scottish, though, with their battalion war diarist regularly recording that upon returning to the front lines work parties had to be immediately formed for “building new dugouts and draining trenches.”
¹⁷

Badly mauled in the Ypres Salient fighting, the 15
^th
Battalion had also been plagued initially by poor leadership. Its first commander, former Member of Parliament and personal friend of Sam Hughes, Lt.-Col. John Currie (no relation of Arthur Currie) had little military experience. In the midst of the Second Battle of Ypres he had fled the front under the pretence of rounding up stragglers and ended up taking shelter at 2
^nd
Canadian Infantry Brigade headquarters from which he was forcibly ejected. Lt.-Col. John Creelman eventually reported that Currie wound up at his 2
^nd
Canadian Field Artillery headquarters clearly in a drunken condition.
¹⁸
While the incident was largely covered up, Currie was soon sent back to Canada and Lt.-Col. William Renwick Marshall headed up the 15
^th
Battalion as of June 28, 1915. A Royal Regiment officer from Hamilton, Marshall rebuilt the battalion from the ground up over the summer months and re-instilled its pride.

The 48
^th
Highlanders relieved the Canadian Scottish on December 20 so, on Christmas Eve, the Canadian Scots returned to the front. Just before the Battalion marched off, Lt.-Col. Jack Leckie had taken his company commanders aside and advised them that a sergeant from Royal Montreal Regiment had deserted “to the enemy this morning,” while another soldier from that battalion had disappeared the previous day from a listening post in which another man had been found mysteriously shot dead. This was part of a pattern, Urquhart thought, whereby the 14
^th
Battalion was always having “extraordinary things happen.”
¹⁹
Of immediate concern was the sergeant's knowledge that a battalion rotation was underway. If the Germans gleaned that intelligence from him they could either heavily bombard the lines of approach from the rear or even attempt to overrun the forward changes while the changeover was under way.
²⁰

The brigade's only non-Highland battalion, the Montreal-raised battalion had a reputation for severe disciplinary problems. Already the Montrealers were on their third commander, with Lt.-Col. F. W. Fisher having taken over in October. Fisher was having no better luck enforcing discipline than had his predecessors, the problem exacerbated by the fact its No. 4 Company was entirely French-speaking while most of the battalion's officers spoke only English. Both deserters were from that company. The first deserter had clearly murdered the man standing guard with him in the listening post and then fled to German lines while the sergeant had slipped over the parapet in broad daylight in view of many men who made no effort to prevent his leaving.
²¹
Desertion was a serious matter that normally warranted much analysis, yet the battalion's official war diary made no mention of these incidents. Instead, the five pages forming the entire month of December's entries were most often marked by nothing more than a shorthand entry for ditto—“do, do, do.”
²²

A hard rain fell that Christmas Eve as the Canadian Scottish marched toward the front. Word was that the Douve had swept away its bridges and might have to be waded—ensuring everyone would get drenched and that some men might be caught up and drowned. Fortunately one bridge still stood. Nor did the enemy make any moves with either artillery or infantry raids, so the handover was achieved peacefully.

By the time the men settled into the trenches, the rain lifted and the night proved clear and lit by a three-quarter moon that softened “with subdued light the scars and unsightliness of the battlefield into a picture of shades and shadows and still, stark forms.” About fifteen minutes past midnight a German soldier in an outpost facing the battalion's left flank stood and shot off a Very light that bathed No Man's Land in a ghostly light. “Guid Nicht, Jock, and a Merry Christmas,” the man shouted, turned his back to the Canadians, and walked nonchalantly back to the German trenches. About forty-five minutes later 1
^st
Canadian Division's Maj.-Gen. Arthur Currie and 3
^rd
Brigade's Brig. Robert Leckie arrived and the men formed shoulder to shoulder in the trench as the two officers passed down their line, pausing to personally wish many “a Happy Christmas.”

Christmas Day dawned cloudy and proved “as strange as the preceding night.” There was no fighting. Instead the Germans milled about openly behind their trenches—looking “well fed and well clothed, having on a great variety of uniforms, slate colour, green, khaki.” Some ventured beyond their forward parapets, waving bottles of wine and cigarettes to tempt the Canadians into joining them. When some of Urquhart's company began singing Scottish songs while others started walking out into No Man's Land, the officer barred their way and ordered them back into the trench. But he had “great difficulty keeping men down.” Later an artillery linesman dashed over to join the Germans and then the irrepressibly ill-disciplined Cpl. Edward Gallagher from No. 3 Company went out and exchanged cigarettes with one German—an act that drew cheers from both sides. When Gallagher refused demands by his company's acting commander, Lt. David Bell, to return, Lt.-Col. Leckie lost his patience and ordered both Gallagher and Bell arrested. Urquhart saw little sense in this. Rather, he admitted to having a “strange feeling looking at these fellows in perfect friendship and shooting at them next day. What an insane thing.”
²³

Leckie and the other senior battalion officers were increasingly nervous that the situation threatened to get out of hand, for what happened if the men became too friendly with the Germans? Before they could decide a plan of action, however, a machine gun somewhere on the front burned a long burst into the air and “everyone ran to cover like rabbits, and all social intercourse came to an end.”
²⁴
In the future there would be no uncertainty about whether to permit Allied soldiers to fraternize with their German counterparts at Christmas, as sufficient shelling, sniping, and patrolling was scheduled to ensure No Man's Land remained too dangerous.