Brave Battalion (19 page)

With its right flank anchored on the foot of the hill known as The Snout and its left running along the summit of Mount Sorrel with Observatory Ridge—which was the last height of ground between Ypres and the Germans and so tactically vital to both sides—the 16
^th
Battalion occupied a notoriously bad sector for drawing the fire of artillery and snipers positioned atop The Snout. One 60- to 70-yard chunk of open real estate just 500 to 600 yards from The Snout was routinely covered by the snipers there and could only be crossed at great peril in a headlong dash. Urquhart witnessed Major Cyrus Peck making such a dash, moving in a “hop and skip at a pace hardly in keeping with his ample proportions.” Lt. Gordon Tupper, who accompanied the major in this crossing, received a flesh wound while Peck's batman, Pte. James Metcalf, later found a bullet lodged inside the case holding his safety razor. The Snout's snipers were skillful and quick to recognize when senior officers came within range. Brig. George Tuxford had a bullet hit his newly issued steel helmet, circle clean around inside it, and then pass out like a momentarily trapped bee might without causing him the slightest injury.
¹³

At first the German artillery concentrated its full fury on 2
^nd
Division's lines, but on April 4 the guns subjected the entire corps front to an almost continuous bombardment despite marking St. Eloi as the bull's-eye point. The two forward 2
^nd
Division battalions were badly mauled and their trenches so damaged that the men were exposed to deadly fire from machine guns ranging in from just 150 yards' distance. By the evening of April 5, an attempt to relieve one of the battalions began despite the heavy shellfire. This relief was still underway when two German battalions counterattacked at 0330 hours on April 6 and, in less than three hours, the Canadian troops lost all the gains won by the British on March 27. The fighting would seesaw back and forth until April 19, when 2
^nd
Division and British Second Army's Gen. Herbert Plumer—who had ordered repeated counterattacks—were forced to admit defeat. Canadian casualties totalled 1,373 in exchange for 483 Germans killed.

“It seems extraordinary, yet if one thinks of it quietly and calmly, it is not very likely, but almost a natural outcome of the conditions under which your Division took over the line,” Lt.-Gen. Edwin Alderson wrote Maj.-Gen. Richard Turner. “Our Army Commander, gallant gentleman as he is, has taken it well, though he is probably most hit, because the Army originated the situation.”
¹⁴

Plumer took the loss anything but graciously. He sacked the chief of staff and an assortment of officers from 3
^rd
British Division, whom he believed botched the initial offensive. Then he turned on the Canadians, demanding the heads of Turner and Brig. H. D. B. Ketchen—whose 6
^th
Canadian Infantry Brigade had been driven back. Knowing he could save only one of the men, Alderson drafted a report that made Ketchen the scapegoat. On reading it, Turner refused to endorse what he considered a pack of distortions. Furious at this rebuke by an officer he held in little esteem, Alderson asked Field Marshal Douglas Haig to dismiss Turner. Haig, cautioning that he sensed “some feeling against the English” among the Canadians, demurred and decided to axe neither Turner nor Ketchen. Mistakes were to be expected, he declared, and the Canadians had all done “their best and made a gallant fight.”

None of this quelled Plumer's fury and, backed into a corner, Haig announced that Alderson faced too many “administrative and political questions … in addition to his duties as commander in the field” and also “reluctantly” concluded that he was “incapable of holding the Canadian Divisions together.” Responding to a War Office request, Prime Minister Robert Borden and his Cabinet approved replacing Alderson on April 26. Within a month he was shuffled off to a face-saving appointment as Inspector General of the Canadian Troops in England.
¹⁵
Thoroughly baffled, Alderson went to his largely redundant new posting believing his insistence on replacing the Ross rifle and equally problematic Colt machine gun with British weapons the summer before had so infuriated Sam Hughes that he vengefully masterminded his ouster. Although the move had enraged Hughes, who had watched with despair as the Canadian Corps set aside the Ross for Lee Enfields and the Colt in favour of a medley of Vickers and Lewis machine guns, he had played no role in Alderson's removal.

Ottawa left it to Haig to appoint a successor and he selected Lt.-Gen. Julian H. G. Byng. The fifty-three-year-old Byng, known as “Bungo,” had been commander-in-chief of the British Army of Occupation in Egypt when the war broke out. Recalled to command 3
^rd
Cavalry Division, he had led it through the First Battle of Ypres and more recently overseen the British evacuation from Gallipoli before taking command of XVII Corps on the Western Front. Both as a divisional and corps commander Byng had established a reputation as a “master of tactics,” who was practical, thoughtful, and unafraid of innovation.
¹⁶
This had surprised many colleagues who had seen him as a stereotypical cavalryman—jaunty, cheerful, but not overly bright.

Perhaps fearing it meant he was being sent into the wilderness of obscurity, Byng lamented: “Why am I sent to the Canadians? I don't know a Canadian. Why this stunt?”
¹⁷
Initially his fears seemed valid as Canadian Corps was directed to take over a larger frontage in the salient so that Haig could withdraw British divisions for transfer to the Somme where the next great summer offensive was to occur.

The new alignment of the corps left 2
^nd
Division still before St. Eloi, 1
^st
Division operating with two battalions forward in a frontage centred on Hill 60, and 3
^rd
Division extending its full four battalions in line from Hill 60, past Mount Sorrel to Hill 61 and nearby Hill 62, then north-wards to Sanctuary Wood, and into The Gap—as the ruined village of Hooge was called. Branching off for a thousand yards west of Hill 62—nicknamed Tor Top—was Observatory Ridge. The Germans had long desired this ridge, because from its heights they would be able to mount accurate artillery fire against any target deep behind the Allied front, which might well make retaining the salient untenable.

In early May, the Canadians began to suspect the Germans were getting ready to make their move when patrols discovered German engineers pushing saps forward on either side of Tor Top. By month end, a trench dug 50 yards forward of the German front line and just a hundred yards from the Canadian wire on a lateral line to the saps tied them together. Similar saps were found in front of Mount Sorrel. The Royal Flying Corps also reported that a curious trench system had appeared that served no tactical purpose, but identically matched the Canadian positions near Tor Top. Was this a rehearsal area? Nobody knew. But the sense that something was afoot grew.

Just after nightfall on June 1, the German artillery fell silent all along the Canadian front. Not another shell was fired for the remaining seven hours of darkness. Unbeknownst to the Canadians, German infantry was at work in No Man's Land, cutting gaps in the wire in front of 3
^rd
Division. Rising suspicions that the artillery silence meant the Germans were up to something were allayed when the guns resumed their harassment fire shortly before dawn. At 0600 on June 2, Maj.-Gen. Malcolm Mercer and Brig. Victor Williams of the division's 8
^th
Canadian Infantry Brigade were strolling the front-line trenches that ran from Mount Sorrel to Tor Top just as the Germans opened up with a “veritable tornado of fire [that] ravaged the Canadian positions from half a mile west of Mount Sorrel to the northern edge of Sanctuary Wood.” What followed, the War Office later declared, was “the heaviest [bombardment] endured by British troops up to this time.”
¹⁸
Unable to drive the Allies out of their forward trenches with poison gas, the Germans had now decided to mirror Allied tactics by attempting to blast them out through sheer weight of shells fired from a massive concentration of guns positioned immediately behind the infantry being sent into an attack.

Smack in the vortex of this bombardment was 8
^th
Brigade's 4
^th
Canadian Mounted Rifles and, in minutes, “their trenches vanished and the garrisons in them were annihilated.” Of 702 officers and men, only 76 emerged unscathed. Mercer and Williams were both gravely wounded—the former's eardrums shattered. Nobody could move, there was no question of evacuating the wounded or rescuing the two senior officers from where they lay. On Mount Sorrel's reverse slope an underground gallery offered some shelter and here most of the survivors huddled until it too collapsed. The barrage raged for seven hours. Then the Germans detonated four mines close to the trenches on Mount Sorrel and four infantry battalions advanced with eleven more standing in reserve. “In bright sunlight the grey-coated figures advanced in four waves spaced about seventy-five yards apart,” wrote the Canadian official historian. “Afterwards Canadian survivors spoke of the assured air and the almost leisurely pace of the attackers, who appeared confident that their artillery had blotted out all resistance.”

They met virtually no resistance, for 1
^st
Canadian Mounted Rifles—the other 8
^th
Brigade battalion on the front lines—had also been shattered by the shelling and reduced to scattered bands that could only fight and die or surrender. Meanwhile, 3
^rd
Division's commander was struck in the leg by a bullet and then finished off by a spray of shrapnel. Williams was captured. In minutes the division and brigade under attack were rendered leaderless. From a few isolated fortified positions, Canadians fought back only to be immolated by Germans armed with flamethrowers. After piercing 600 yards into the Canadian lines, the storm troops leading the assault halted per their instructions and began digging in despite being astride Observatory Ridge with little between them and the ultimate prize of Ypres. This gave the beleaguered Canadians a breathing space to reorganize and establish a blocking line.

Brig. E. S. Hoare-Nairne of the Lahore Divisional Artillery assumed temporary command of 3
^rd
Division while Lt.-Col. J.C.L. Bott of the 2
^nd
Canadian Mounted Rifles took over 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade, reestablishing a command structure. Byng, meanwhile, issued orders at 2045 that “all ground lost to-day will be retaken tonight” in a counterattack at 0200 hours. With 3
^rd
Division in disarray and reeling from its devastating losses, Hoare-Nairne was given two of 1
^st
Division's brigades for the counterattack with 2
^nd
Canadian Infantry Brigade to operate against Mount Sorrel while 3
^rd
Canadian Infantry Brigade struck Tor Top.
¹⁹

Because 3
^rd
Brigade had been in corps reserve and 16
^th
Battalion's Lt.-Col. Jack Leckie was away on leave, Major Cyrus Peck commanded the Canadian Scottish. Peck had been at brigade headquarters when the initial bombardment of 3
^rd
Division began and for far too long the news received was contradictory and confusing. Finally, he had returned to battalion knowing little other than a crisis was at hand. Rumours were flying that the entire salient was collapsing.

Not until 1630 hours was Brig. George Tuxford summoned to 1
^st
Division headquarters and told 3
^rd
Brigade would be attacking. Even then Maj.-Gen. Arthur Currie could not tell him what objectives he was to aim for. Tuxford decided all he could do was get the brigade moving toward the front, but this had to be undertaken cautiously as he had no idea how far the Germans had penetrated.
²⁰

Peck had anticipated events, earlier confining the Canadian Scottish to their camp while “the wagons, with the entrenching tools, reserve small arms ammunition, and grenades were brought from the transport lines.”
²¹
Consequently, when orders arrived at 1700 hours, the battalion was able to move immediately. Because of the way the brigade had been billeted, the Royal Montreal Regiment and 48
^th
Highlanders of Canada were closer to the jumping-off point than the other two battalions, so Tuxford decided they would put in the attack with the Royal Highlanders of Canada and the Canadian Scottish standing in support.

While his men marched, Tuxford reported to Brigadier Hoare-Nairne for final instructions. He was dismayed to be kept loitering outside 3
^rd
Division headquarters until 2145 hours because the acting divisional commander was off discussing details at corps headquarters. Finally, Hoare-Nairne returned and gave Tuxford written instructions that in “conjunction with the 2
^nd
Canadian Infantry Brigade on the right and the 7
^th
Canadian Infantry Brigade on the left, the 3
^rd
Brigade would attack and recover trenches 52 to 59 inclusive, comprising Hills 61 and 62.” With the brigade still 11 miles from its dawn attack position, Tuxford realized he was in “a race against time.” Fortunately a 3
^rd
Division staff officer had sped things up with a telephone call to 3
^rd
Brigade headquarters. Advised of the plan well before Tuxford, Captain Urquhart had acted on his own initiative and ordered the battalions forward a mile to an assembly point near Zillebeke.
²²