Brave Battalion (26 page)

Overall, Canadian Corps casualties in the Somme led to its full withdrawal from that sector on October 11 with 4
^th
Canadian Infantry Division fed into the line on October 11 under command of Reserve Army's II Corps. This Canadian division would be bloodied in successive attempts to seize Regina Trench, a goal that would not be won until November 11. Seventeen days later the last Canadian division on the Somme would depart for integration into Canadian Corps. By then the Battle of the Somme, after five devastatingly bloody months, was considered closed.

Canadian battle casualties totalled 24,029—a mere fraction of the 623,907 Allied dead and wounded. The Germans reported 465,525 casualties, but this figure did not take into account a quarter of their wounded who were treated just back of the front and returned to duty. British statisticians reworked the German numbers for a tally of about 670,000. Tellingly, Gen. Erich Ludendorff, commander of the German 8th Army engaged on the Somme, considered it “had been fought to a standstill and was now utterly worn out.”
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He was determined to “save the men from a second Somme battle.”
³

Field Marshal Douglas Haig declared his objectives won and that therefore the Somme was a victory. Verdun had been relieved, the Germans subjected to heavy attrition. But if the German Army could ill afford the losses of another Somme, neither could the Allies. Attrition rates equal to those inflicted on the Germans would leave France and the British Empire so weakened of troop strength that neither would ever recover. Haig's tactics had raised war's horror and butchery to new heights, but the Germans struck back with equal ferocity and endured.

There had been no seminal change. The long, winding trenches of the Western Front divided by the killing ground of No Man's Land remained. Nobody knew how to break the stalemate. The Western Front, as Captain Hugh Urquhart wrote, had become the “Sphinx with the unsolved riddles. Each attempt to untie the Gordian knot met with further problems.” While the “violence of the Somme had shaken the enemy, it was equally true” that it had traumatized the British Empire. “Thereafter there was a gradual weakening of the will to conquer. The drain of blood, the disappointment at the lack of definite results had imposed too great a strain on the vitality of the nation; its main line of resistance had been broken into. For German and British Empires alike, the winter and spring of 1916-17 was a turning point of the war.”
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As winter descended, the weather only imposed greater misery on the weary troops. Each return to trench duty plunged them back into a place that seemed a portent of what hell must be like. In this cold hell, the mud, noise, and putrid stench of death and decay were always present. Unnaturally engorged rats were everywhere, often seen feeding openly on unburied corpses. A sleeping man might well awake to find one beginning to nibble on his finger or staring directly into his eyes. Rations were never sufficient. The persistent diet of corned beef, hardtack, tea, and watery jam was both monotonous and nutrient-deficient. Water was often polluted and stale by the time it was brought up from the rear.

New diseases thrived in this unsanitary and cruel environment. In 1915, doctors identified a new disease transmitted by the body lice that afflicted everyone. Soldiers afflicted with trench fever, as the disease was called, were left exhausted by fever, chronic headaches, and sore muscles, bones, and joints. Outbreaks of skin lesions on the chest and back worsened the condition. Recovery took about two months, but, as those suffering the disease were seldom evacuated to rear area hospitals; the majority were forced to just soldier on despite their symptoms. Trench foot—a literal rotting away of feet that could never be properly cleaned or dried—was a constant hazard, and sergeants routinely inspected men in an attempt to detect its onset at the earliest stages when it would be arrested by a proper cleaning and a fresh pair of socks. Trench mouth was a particularly disgusting malady caused by the difficulty of practising good oral hygiene, lack of fresh fruit, overuse of tobacco, and stress. It left a mouthful of bacteria called “acute necrotizing ulcerative gingivitis” that caused bleeding gums and rank breath. Men suffering an acute case often had all their teeth pulled after the gums turned grey and rotted. Highly infectious, it could be transmitted by sharing cups and gas respirators.
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Not all diseases were new. Pneumonia, diphtheria, typhus, tetanus, dysentery, and scabies were all prevalent.

Battle fatigue was equally prevalent and paid little official attention, being often equated with cowardice. “He's got the jitters,” men would say of a mate suffering it. Among the symptoms were inordinate irritability, insomnia, and responding to the slightest noise with body jerks and other startled gestures.

Even when a man was not suffering some psychological or physical malady, there was the constant cold and wetness during the winter. Sheepskin coats and wool uniforms were hard to keep dry. Poorly made leather boots were equally so. With spring came warm temperatures, but these meant sweat that soaked uniforms and made them stink. Heat also bred lice and no amount of scratching provided more than a second's relief.

Always there was the tiredness. When not fighting or standing sentry duty, there were innumerable fatigues—the aptly named work parties that kept the trench systems functioning. Men dug and repaired trenches, carried wounded to the rear and brought supplies forward, buried their dead, and performed countless other tedious, menial tasks.

Boredom was also a curse of trench life. Long lulls of quiet stretched between the terrifying times of battle and there was little to break the monotony. Men could only gamble, talk, work, and sleep so much of a day. Some men whittled or did other crafts that were possible in the trenches. Books were passed about until they fell apart. Singing was popular. But still the hours dragged.

The winter of 1916-1917 also brought a period of intense reorganization of the Canadian army, as it recovered from the losses suffered that fall and began rebuilding for the new spring offensives. Prime Minister Robert Borden fired Sam Hughes on November 9 and appointed George Perley as Minister of the Overseas Military Forces. Perley possessed greater authority than the former Minister of Militia and Defence had enjoyed. From London, Perley concentrated on instilling a professional management style on an army that, under Hughes, had operated in an ad hoc, all too often chaotic, manner. Perley replaced Maj.-Gen. Henry Burstall with Maj.-Gen. Richard Turner and charged the former 2
^nd
Canadian Infantry Division commander with running the Overseas Ministry. The Canadian Expeditionary Force had seventy battalions in England without plans for their posting to Canadian Corps or combat service. Turner amalgamated them into twenty-four reserve battalions and organized the battalions according to the soldiers' Canadian region or province, thus reinstituting the territorial regimental system Hughes had so despised.
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On the mainland, meanwhile, Canadian Corps had moved to a relatively quiet sector in the area of Lens and Vimy to rebuild. Each division now wore “Somme Patches”—coloured flannel rectangles sewn on the shoulders that provided recognition at a glance. In sequence from 1
^st
Division to 4
^th
Division, the colours were red, blue, grey, and green. Below the divisional marker another identified the soldier's battalion.

While unit flashes reinforced esprit de corps they also contributed to the growing friction between the divisions. In the winter of 1916-17, Canadian Corps was not a cohesive fighting force, but rather a grouping of four divisions whose men gave more allegiance to their division and battalion than the corps. A lingering animosity persisted between 1
^st
and 2
^nd
Divisions that had its roots on the 1914 Salisbury Plain training grounds. When in reserve, the two divisions maintained a wary distance. Third Division, having been shredded almost immediately after it deployed to the Ypres Salient and then mauled in the Somme, had suffered such casualties that it had lost all semblance of an identity. Its officers concentrated on building a sense of divisional esprit and cared less about how it fit within the Canadian Corps. Having just arrived on the scene, 4
^th
Division was a stranger and the others had yet to decide if its officers and men could be trusted.
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Lt.-Gen. Julian Byng tackled the problem head on by forcing small groups of battalion commanders from each division to work through various tactical schemes at Corps headquarters. Byng was no stereotypical British general. He cared little for spit and polish, concentrating instead on efficiency and results. Medical Officer Andrew Macphail described Byng as “large, strong, lithe, with worn boots and frayed puttees. He carried his hand in his pocket and returned a salute by lifting his hand as far as the pocket will allow.”
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Each group worked for about a week together and, every evening, Byng and his staff discussed solutions over dinner and drinks. This forced the officers to socialize. Drafts of more junior officers and non-commissioned officers were also sent to a corps school where exercises ensured they were mixed with counterparts from the other divisions.

Byng also deliberately shuffled officers and personnel from one division to another, ignoring the complaints this engendered. This British general, who had originally bemoaned having to command Canadians, now championed national identity over all other considerations. Loyalty to battalion and division were admirable, he repeatedly told the troops, but “above all things they were Canadians, and, accordingly, must devote themselves to the interests of that body which in the eyes of the world stood for Canada, namely, the Canadian Corps.”
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It was a compelling argument and, as the winter wore on, a sense of corps identity took root and slowly began to blossom. Ever pragmatic, Byng knew a Canadian Corps identity would be greatly fostered by having himself and the other British corps officers replaced by Canadians. To this end he was already quietly mentoring Maj.-Gen. Arthur Currie to be his successor.
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Meanwhile, the Canadian Corps was struggling to absorb hundreds of reinforcements and still remain an efficient fighting unit. As was true for most battalions, many of 16
^th
Battalion's wounded during the Somme were being invalided out of active service. This meant the majority of replacements were “strangers to the unit,” being supplied from England in “haphazard fashion.” Happily, the Canadian Scottish officers observed, these new soldiers “could not have been improved had the unit had a choice in the selection of reinforcement. They quickly imbibed the spirit of the Battalion; they were loyal to its traditions; they made it their own, just as if they had served in its ranks from the beginning of the war.”
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Credit for how quickly the new men identified with the battalion went in large measure to its new commander, Lt.-Col. Cyrus Peck. On November 3, Lt.-Col. Jack Leckie had been promoted to command of the 2
^nd
Canadian Reserve Brigade in England. While both Leckie brothers had maintained some degree of studied distance from everyone under their command, Peck was eminently approachable. Imaginative, thoughtful, and able to infuse humour into most situations, Peck's manner was such that people sought his approval. No crisis seemed to dent his confidence. He charmed the officers' mess with recitations from Shelley and Keats—poets Peck revered—and could draw upon a vast knowledge of the works of history and philosophy that he devoured at a prodigious rate. His wit was keen, but never used to diminish others. Although he was intellectually inclined, Peck's years on the British Columbian frontier set him at ease talking with the roughest soldier. Peck talked down to nobody and he made known his fierce pride in the battalion's troops. Repeatedly, he told visitors: “No such men as his own had ever lived before.”