Brave Battalion (27 page)

Peck also spent only as much time in battalion headquarters as necessary to ensure its smooth running. During combat operations, he was to be seen striding along the front—personal piper at his side. And when the signal to go over the top came, Peck normally “went forward with the Battalion in the attack; and sometimes, contrary to orders … ahead of it.” Cautioned repeatedly—given his ample proportions—against presenting such a conspicuous target, Peck countered that as “an aid to morale and comradeship, nothing … could take the place of the personal example where officer and men took equal chances with death.”

One thing Peck was adamant about. The Canadian Scottish was a Highland regiment and he recognized that heritage at every turn. Never was the skirl of pipes heard more often within a Canadian battalion's lines. Peck insisted on five pipers, one each for the companies and a fifth personal piper, accompanying the troops into battle. Each piper was allowed to play just two tunes, one to identify the position of his assigned company and the other to rally the troops he served and guide them to their objective.

“When I first proposed to take pipers into action,” Peck later wrote, “I met with a great deal of criticism. I persisted, and as I have no Scottish blood in my veins, no one had reason to accuse me of acting from racial prejudices. I believe that the purpose of war is to win victories, and if one can do this better by encouraging certain sentiments and traditions, why shouldn't it be done? The heroic and dramatic effect of a piper stoically playing his way across the modern battlefield, altogether oblivious of danger, has an extraordinary effect on the spirit of his comrades.”

Too much noise on the modern battlefield to hear pipers, skeptics countered. Peck volleyed back that the overwhelming din of combat seldom was continuous or long-lasting. “When you got under the enemy's barrage, which was only the work of a few moments, and when your own barrage got ahead of the advance, which generally happened, after the first one or two ‘lifts' of the artillery, the skirl of the pipes could be heard for a considerable distance.”

Another objection was that pipers presented easy targets. “Well,” Peck replied, “that is part of the game. Officers, machine gunners and runners are conspicuous. People get killed in war because they are conspicuous; many get killed when they are not, and that's part of the game, too.”
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War was a game with ever-changing rules. Verdun and the Somme had proven that, to avoid futile slaughter, new offensive tactics were required. Field Marshal Douglas Haig had sought to loosen the deadlock with the creeping barrage and tanks, but these had proved insufficient. Artillery could inflict massive damage, but it was unlikely to decide the battle and the tanks were still too crude and unreliable to carry the day.

Seeking new innovations, Byng had dispatched Currie to study French tactics. Currie came back impressed with the importance they placed on detailed reconnaissance, particularly the basic principle that every man spend time in the front trenches being thoroughly briefed on the ground to be covered, the location and nature of objectives, and the likely resistance. The French used aerial reconnaissance more than the British, providing even junior officers with aerial photos they could use to brief their men. Instead of designating trenches or numbered reference points marked on a topographic map as objectives, the French now selected recognizable geographical features—a summit, wood, or river—that would serve as highly defensible ground for repelling the inevitable German counterattack. Making a defensive stand in a just captured German trench, the French had concluded, was a mug's game—for these were designed to be defended against Allied attacks from the opposite direction.

Not only had the French revamped platoon tactics, but they also had begun conducting elaborate dress rehearsals on ground as similar to the real terrain as possible. At the company and platoon level, the
poilus
drilled in new fire and movement tactics that enabled each platoon to fight independently.

Some of this was not new. British training manuals pre-dating the war emphasized the need to adapt infantry tactics to the situation faced. But the French not only stressed fluidity and adaptability. They armed the platoon to ensure it possessed innately formidable prowess. Infantry, the French officers told Currie, must be the masters of the battlefield rather than artillery. In keeping with this dictum, French tactics insisted that the leading wave of an attack press through to the objective by flowing around strongly defended German positions, leaving them to follow-on forces.
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Infantry either prevailed or failed. And the platoon was the unit at the heart of infantry. Currie advocated adopting the French system by rote, an opinion also soon championed by the British War Office itself. The “efficiency of its platoon commanders will often be the measure of an army's success,” declared one War Office memo. Remodelling of the platoon began.
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Suddenly, B.E.F. platoons were being given the weapons and organization to survive and dominate the battlefield. Canadian Scottish platoons were first equipped with one Lewis gun and then two to supplement the rifle, bayonet, rifle grenades, and bombs already employed. Each weapon had its special purpose. The “Lewis gun—a weapon of opportunity—and the rifle to deal with the enemy in the open, the rifle grenade and bomb to get at those behind cover, and the bayonet for hand-to-hand fighting. With the combination of these weapons, each supporting the advance as the need arose, it was possible for the commander and his men to initiate tactics suitable for a variety of conditions and ground … the purpose behind this grouping was to create a balanced, self-sufficient fighting body which could act as the spearhead of the attack, ready at a moment's notice to exploit the advantage of battle. Towards the attainment of this end all existing battalion organization was adjusted.”
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Individual initiative was nurtured. Everyone was to know how to operate all the weapons. Should the platoon leader fall, the non-commissioned officer must be ready to take over. Command would keep devolving downward until no man remained. The platoon was to be a dynamic organism able to adapt to circumstances rapidly rather than adhering rigidly to a prescribed plan. Horrific losses were still expected, but the survivors should be able to fight through to the objective and hold it until reinforced.

As 1916 gave way to 1917, Byng maintained a grinding training pace, for he knew that come the spring Canadian Corps would face its greatest challenge—the capture of Vimy Ridge. Situated north of Arras, this five-mile-long ridge stood just 457 feet at its highest point, but in a country of open plains Vimy Ridge dominated the surrounding terrain. After its capture in 1914, the Germans had transformed it into their most heavily fortified area in France. Its western slope and the crest line were honeycombed with deep underground caverns capable of housing entire battalions. A formidable trench system provided three lines of defence intended to hold the heaviest Allied assault until reinforcements could arrive to erase any gains won. Placed at regular intervals along the advanced trench line were concrete machine-gun emplacements. Completely surrounded by barbed wire, these bunkers served as independent fortresses. But their fields of fire also overlapped, so that the well-protected gunners jointly could cover the entire front. Because the Germans possessed the heights, it was impossible for the Allies to pull off a surprise attack, for their lines were completely exposed to observation. Unlike the slope facing the Allies, which rose gradually to the crest, Vimy Ridge's reverse slope fell away steeply to the Douai plain where thick woods provided excellent concealment for German artillery. With good reason the Germans had declared Vimy Ridge impregnable.

Byng knew his Canadians must prove them wrong or die trying, for Vimy Ridge was considered an essential objective in the forthcoming Allied offensive. The brainchild of Gen. Robert Nivelle, general-in-chief of the French Armies of the North and North-East, the offensive entailed a combined British and French attack from the Oise River to Lens intended to pin the opposing Germans in place while a second French attack along the Aisne River between Reims and Soissons achieved a breakthrough. With three great armies consisting of twenty-seven divisions striking across a vast front, Nivelle predicted that the Germans, unable to reinforce one sector by drawing troops from another, would be unable to prevent the long-sought breakout. Once the war became one of manoeuvre, the massed Allied force would be unstoppable.
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What made Vimy Ridge important was that its seizure would enable Canadian Corps to establish a blocking position that would secure not only the British left flank during the offensive but also that of the entire Allied forces. Because the B.E.F. would be fully engaged, Byng had been warned the Canadians must win Vimy Ridge alone.

It was a daunting, seemingly impossible task. The only thing working in their favour, Byng knew, was time. Arriving on the front in the late fall of 1916, they had ample opportunity to prepare and gain familiarity with the ground. Half of the Canadian Corps front faced Vimy Ridge's western slope. Because the Germans held the heights, the Allies considered their completely exposed front in the open plain indefensible. Consequently, rather than constructing an extensive trench system, the front was marked only by a line of small, isolated outposts. These were intended to serve no more than a short delaying function should the Germans ever come down from the heights to fight in the open, but there was slight possibility of this happening because no worthwhile advantage would be gained.

When the Canadian Scottish were stationed in front of Vimy Ridge for the first time in late November, their officers had held a group discussion to ponder what the advantage of “observation possessed by the enemy, perched as he was on the Pimple, the pinnacle of the Ridge at this end of it” must look like. They noted how the ground “climbed abruptly” out of the Zouave Valley “to form the westerly slopes of the Vimy Ridge which rose to the skyline in massive shape broadside on and shut out further view to the east.” The thought of going up that western slope into the face of German fire produced a collective shudder.
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Quickly enough, however, the Canadians all knew they would have to do precisely that because the work undertaken by their engineer and pioneering units was all focused precisely toward the ridge. Old roads running toward the front line were repaired and new ones constructed. A 20-mile-long light rail track was laid that terminated three miles back of the front in the woods of Bois de Bray. “To this spot the transport sections of the various battalions repaired on the afternoon of each day, and on to trucks previously allotted to them, loaded up the rations, ammunition and the sundry other requirements of the men in the line. When darkness fell, off went the train, pulled by the tiny engine across the devastated area,” while the trucks trundled the supplies to the front lines. This greatly reduced the normal expenditure of energy each battalion had to make carrying supplies up by mule or on the backs of men.
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Through the fall and winter the Canadians beavered away. To prevent having their signal lines severed by German artillery, they buried, seven feet underground, a “laddered” system of 21 miles of signal cable and 66 miles of telephone wire that created a multiplicity of links that could not be knocked out by one shell or even a series of direct hits.

Canadian Corps had 50,000 horses and inadequate water supply, so reservoirs were dug and 600,000 gallons a day was pumped to the Corps along channels running 45 miles long.

The Canadian
pièce de résistance
, what the Canadian official historian later declared “one of the great engineering achievements of the war,” was created by the tunnelling companies: eleven underground galleries running almost four miles to the front lines. These electrically lit subways were 25 feet or more underground and through them ran the vital telephone cables and water mains. They also provided a protected route for moving assault troops forward and the wounded back. Huge chambers cut into the flanks of the tunnel throughways housed brigade and battalion headquarters, ammunition magazines, and medical dressing stations. By tapping into existing underground chalk-quarries, such as Zivy cave, room was created below ground to accommodate several complete battalions.
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