Brave Battalion (30 page)

The assault on Vimy Ridge was but a small part of a far larger offensive. To the immediate right, the British Third Army had also won considerable ground while the British Fourth and Fifth Armies had also achieved major gains to the left. Nor did the offensive end with Vimy Ridge's capture, but the role Canadian Corps played in the later fighting was limited. On April 28, 1
^st
Division's 2
^nd
Infantry Brigade struck a bulge in the German line called the Arleux Loop to support an adjoining British assault. While the British offensive collapsed, 2
^nd
Brigade achieved “the only tangible success of the whole operation” by pinching off the loop. But the cost was nearly 1,000 casualties. Following this operation 1
^st
Canadian Infantry Brigade teamed up with 2
^nd
Division's 6
^th
Infantry Brigade in a joint drive on May 2 from Arleux to Fresnoy-en-Gohelle. Although initially successful, German counterattacks soon pushed the Canadians back to their start line.

Meanwhile, the great French offensive intended to break through the German lines into the open country behind had yielded a massacre that cost 200,000 French casualties for a gain of a few miles and about 28,000 prisoners. Gen. Nivelle was sacked and replaced by “the hero of Verdun,” Gen. Philippe Pétain. He inherited an army on the verge of open mutiny with one division refusing orders to return to the line. Some mutineers were executed, many more exiled to Devil's Island and other French penal colonies, and the mutiny broken. But dissent and resentment lingered in the ranks. Pétain personally inspected the majority of the French units and came away convinced the
poilus
were determined not to surrender an inch of ground, but they would bluntly refuse more meaningless attacks. Better living conditions were also demanded and longer periods of leave. Pétain promised to do what he could for them. One thing was clear, though—the French Army was spent and it would take months to return it to being capable of offensive action.

Yet for the Allies to assume a completely defensive posture on the Western Front was anathema to generals and politicians alike. If the Germans realized how far French morale had fallen, surely they would capitalize on it with a major counterstrike. Despite public sentiment throughout the Empire that there must be “no more Battles of the Somme,” Field Marshal Douglas Haig decided the B.E.F. had no choice but to launch a new offensive to again try breaking the stalemate. He would strike near the end of July in the blood-soaked Ypres Salient.
⁴⁰

- JUNE 7, 1917-AUGUST 4, 1918 -

On June 8, Canadian Corps deployed to a new front near the French coal-mining town of Lens. Just two days earlier, Arthur Currie had been knighted, promoted to lieutenant general, and succeeded Gen. Julian Byng as corps commander. Byng's long intention to see Canadian officers at the helm of the corps was finally realized and he departed on good terms with everyone to command the Third Army. One of Currie's first acts was to promote Brig. Archibald Cameron Macdonell to command 1
^st
Division. “Archie” to his friends, the silver-haired, Windsor-born, fifty-three-year-old was Currie's physical opposite, a straight-backed man who looked born to wear a general's uniform. Macdonell had gone from being a North-West Mounted Police officer to command the Lord Strathcona's Horse cavalry regiment in South Africa. At the head of 7
^th
Infantry Brigade, he had been twice wounded in 1916 and was one of Currie's closest friends. “Old Mac,” Currie called him, while the other ranks affectionately referred to Macdonell as “Batty Mac.”

Currie's giving 1
^st
Division to Macdonell angered Prime Minister Robert Borden, who had favoured Maj.-Gen. Garnet Hughes for the position. The son of Sam Hughes currently commanded 5
^th
Canadian Division, was permanently consigned to home defence duties in Britain, and had been clamouring incessantly to lead a fighting division. But Currie had no use for either Garnet Hughes or his father. “I'll get even with you before I'm finished,” Garnet Hughes shouted during a three-hour argument in London where he had demanded that Currie reverse his decision.

Sam and Garnet Hughes were soon presented with a gilded opportunity for revenge when it was discovered that, in 1914, Currie had purloined $8,300 intended for the purchase of uniforms for the Victoria 50
^th
Gordon Highlanders to pay off business debts. Currie had nursed this guilt while the regiment's creditors, who had provided the uniforms and gone unpaid, patiently compiled evidence that proved Currie's duplicity. In June 1917, they submitted to the government sufficient evidence to paint the new corps commander a thief. Only the intervention of two Canadian generals—Maj.-Gen. David Watson and Brig. Victor Odlum—with a $10,883.34 loan to repay the missing funds with interest prevented his being sacked in disgrace. Scandal notwithstanding, Currie's promotion stood and so did Macdonell's.

Currie had spent most of June in London as these proceedings ran their course. Upon his return to corps headquarters, Currie met with the First British Army's commander. Gen. Henry Horne told him the Canadian's current assignment was to pin German divisions in front of its line to prevent their being sent to meet Field Marshal Douglas Haig's July offensive. But the mission was not to be passive. Instead, Horne wanted an attack astride the Souchez River to eliminate a small salient between Avion and Lens's western outskirts. Two previous attempts by 4
^th
Canadian Division's 10
^th
Brigade to carry the salient had achieved little but had resulted in 550 casualties.

Wresting the salient from German hands, Currie decided, would cost more in casualties than was warranted. Instead he ordered a series of hit-and-run raids by 3
^rd
and 4
^th
Divisions that convinced the Germans to collapse the salient at the end of June and establish a more defensible line running in front of Avion. This left Lens almost encircled by the British.

On July 7, the Canadians assumed responsibility for a three-mile length of front facing Lens. Years of shelling had reduced the town to rubble “encircled by a wreath of shattered pithead installations.”

Currie climbed a hill behind the lines and spent the day examining the ground. Hill 70 stood on one side of Lens and Sallumines Hill on the other. Hill 70 was an uninspiring barren limestone dome with clusters of brick company-owned miners' cottages scattered across its slopes. The cellars of these shelled-out ruins had been transformed into protected fighting positions linked together by a spider web of trenches and tunnels. Simple enough to take the town, he realized, but the Germans on the hills would then hit the Canadians with murderous fire. There was also nowhere behind the lines to hide artillery within range of Lens. The guns would have to set up on the open plain.
¹

“If we are to fight,” Currie told Horne the next day, “let us fight for something worth having.” That something was Hill 70. Take it, dig in, and bleed the Germans when they counterattacked. Horne deferred the decision to Haig, who came to Canadian Corp headquarters on July 23 to hear Currie's plan. The Canadian general had spent the intervening time well and presented a full operational plan that proposed blasting the Germans off Hill 70 with a massive artillery program—for which he would need more guns. Although Haig's artillery chief chided that the Canadians had sufficient firepower, the field marshal curtly intervened, saying: “See that General Currie gets the extra guns he wants.”
²

Sour weather forced a delay from August 4 to August 15, which suited Currie fine as it gave more time for the meticulous planning and preparations that he favoured. Although Hill 70 was the primary objective, the Canadian offensive would span two miles of front from Bois Hugo on the left to Cité Ste. Elisabeth on the right. Hill 70 lay about 750 yards south of Bois Hugo. From Hill 70's summit to Cité Ste. Elisabeth the ground was cluttered with wrecked mine works and buildings the Germans had transformed into fighting positions. Responsibility for taking Hill 70 went to 1
^st
Division with 2
^nd
Division given the job of clearing the ground south of it. In 1
^st
Division's sector, 3
^rd
Brigade would be on the left and 2
^nd
Brigade the right. Three 3
^rd
Brigade battalions would advance on narrow lines to clear the area north of Hill 70 with 16
^th
Battalion brushing past the flank of its northern slope, while the 13
^th
Battalion advanced to its left with 15
^th
Battalion directed against Bois Hugo. The 10
^th
Battalion from 2
^nd
Brigade with 7
^th
Battalion in trail would seize Hill 70 itself, and the 5
^th
Battalion followed by 8
^th
Battalion would clear the southern slope. In all, the two divisions would deploy ten battalions. The attack closely mirrored that on Vimy Ridge with an advance divided into three stages of which the German front line would be the destination for the first bound. Thereafter the German second position running across Hill 70's crest, designated Blue Line, would be the next objective. The final stage would end at Green Line, a section of frontage running behind the eastern or backslope of Hill 70 that lay 1,500 yards from the start point. Zero Hour was set for 0425 hours.
³

The Canadian Scottish had formed up in trenches on the front during the night of August 13-14. No. 2 Company, under Major Edward Gilliat, would lead the attack on the right. Gilliat was a hardened veteran, who had been with the battalion since 1914. On his left was Lt. Bill Petrie's No. 1 Company. Petrie had joined the Canadian Scottish in March 1916. Each company was to advance to Blue Line with two platoons forward and two following in another wave. Major James Murphy's No. 4 Company with its four platoons formed line abreast would follow directly behind the leading companies while Lt. George Francis Mason's No. 3 Company provided the mopping-up force for bypassed German strongpoints. The fact that relatively new and inexperienced lieutenants commanded two of the companies reflected the shortage of officers that still plagued Canadian Corps.
⁴

Piper Alexander “Alec” McGillivray stood fretting in the trench as the countdown to Zero Hour began. Finally turning to CSM Frank Macdonald of No. 2 Company, the twenty-nine-year-old lance corporal, who hailed originally from Acraracle in the Argyllshire region of Scotland, quietly whispered that he felt “anxious,” afraid that because he was so slight the weight of the pipes and other equipment might leave him scrambling behind the men—which would “bring disgrace on a Highland piper.”

Macdonald pondered the matter for a moment. “Well, if you think that way, ask the company commander to allow you to climb out before us,” he suggested. McGillivray quickly secured Major Gilliat's permission and as the barrage opened “he led off the advance, well ahead of the attacking wave, playing his pipes.”
⁵

CSM Macdonald set off hot on the piper's heels as soon as the whistle sounded only to snag his kilt in a tangle of wire and pitch onto his face in the mud. As he struggled to free himself from the wire, Macdonald found himself shoulder to shoulder with a private who had suffered the same head-first plunge. As the two wiped the muck off their faces the private quipped, “Well, Mac, I guess if you and I were hung for beauty now, we would be innocent men.”
⁶

It was a clockwork advance, for the bombardment shattered the will of the Germans in the front line. Those not killed or wounded either surrendered or fled. The leading companies hurdled the German front trenches and pressed on across ground badly cratered by the bombardment for Blue Line about 500 yards distant. In negotiating around a concentration of craters, Lt. Petrie strayed far to the left and a dangerous gap opened between his company and Gilliat's. From his rear position, Lt. James McIvor, leading a No. 3 Company platoon acting as a wiring party, assessed the problem and rushed his men forward and plugged the hole between the two companies. Twenty-five minutes after Zero Hour the battalion sent back a signal that it was on Blue Line.