Brave Battalion (45 page)

The divisions bound for occupation duty, meanwhile, enjoyed a near triumphal march through Belgium en route to Germany. In every town where the Canadian Scottish billeted they were feted as liberators. Their reception at Soignies was typical—the mayor renaming the village's main square “Place Canadian Scottish.” On November 21, the battalion entered Nivelles and was greeted by throngs of cheering civilians. “Nothing was too good for us at Nivelles,” wrote one soldier, “soft feather beds and warm billets. Eight thousand bottles of wine were dug up from the château grounds.”
³²

Until November 25, the weather remained favourable, but from then on it rained almost daily. With the side roads reduced to muddy quagmires each division abandoned them, and infantry, trucks, and horses moved in one great column stretching along the main road. To avoid overtaxing the small towns in the Ardennes and Eifel districts, each division broke into brigade formations separated by a day's march, so as one moved forward the town in which it had stayed the night before became available for use by the next in line. “The long hours of marching over cobblestones or through heavy mud,” noted the army's official historian, “were taking a toll in blistered feet, and the continual drizzling rain had an added depressing effect.”
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Despite these problems the Canadian Scottish completed its longest march to date on November 27—23 miles—with only a few men falling out en route, arriving at its billet in Stant d'Avril at 1730 hours. But there was grumbling aplenty when no rations arrived that evening for the following day and the men had to set off without breakfast.
³⁴
Each division had advanced about 100 miles at this point from the single supply railhead west of Valenciennes, and the deteriorating road conditions made it increasingly difficult for the Army Service Corps to get supplies up to the troops. After what was a thankfully short march, the Canadian Scottish solved the immediate problem by breaking open the canteen stock and buying whatever they could acquire from the local citizenry.

November 29 brought no respite as the Canadian Scottish headed for Andenne, a town in the Meuse valley on the edge of the Ardennes mountains. This was “a barren country, the hunting ground of the wealthy in times of peace and fit for little else,” the battalion's historian recorded. “The home of a peasantry, who toiled from morning to night, summer and winter, raising miserable crops and cutting faggots and peat to earn a living. Up the slopes and over the rough roads of those pine-clad hills rising bleak and forbidding in front through the driving sleet of a November storm, lay the next stage of the journey.”

At Andenne the battalion was dismayed to find no billets. The preceding brigade had not advanced as scheduled, but word of this change reached 3
^rd
Brigade headquarters only after the Canadian Scottish—who led that day—had long departed. “Everybody's [up] in the air,” the war diarist wrote, but the officers scrounged up sufficient barns and other buildings to provide the men with some shelter. And to the relief of all, rations arrived after nightfall.

The next morning the battalion climbed the “steep, torturous roads that led into the mountains.” With the ration supply continuing to be problematic and the marching conditions continuing to be difficult, the grousing in the ranks worsened. Two days later, three platoons from one company refused to move, their spokesmen claiming that they “had been told … the brigade in front had not moved when rations were short, and why should they be asked to march.” The company commander bullied the “insubordinate platoons” into forming up and the march proceeded on schedule.

Learning of the problem with these platoons, Lt.-Col. Peck had the men pulled aside and “in one of those ‘straight from the shoulder' rebukes which he could deliver when the occasion demanded, let the trouble makers know exactly how any repetition of such conduct would be dealt with.”
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Next morning the battalion recovered its usual good spirits despite marching through “a thick, damp mist which later in the day turned to a steady rain.” Marching over a rough road that was little more than a muddy horse track, the men logged a remarkable 24 miles. “The troops,” one officer noted, “were in fine form. The last two laps of the journey they perked right up, and came into billets—which were not reached until after dusk—singing, merry and bright.”

They were closing on the frontier and passing through Belgian territory where the civilians were pro-German. No longer did the crowds cheer the soldiers tramping through their villages and towns. Instead they showed only a “forced politeness.” Provost marshals preceded the marching troops, posting notices bearing Field Marshal Douglas Haig's signature that warned any “acts of hostility against His Majesty's Forces or any wanton destruction of roads, railways or telegraph lines would be punishable by death.”

On December 6, while marching across “a stretch of scrubby bog-land high up in the Ardennes, the Battalion reached the German frontier. The pipe band drew to one side, struck up ‘The Blue Bonnets' and the 16
^th
passed into the enemy's homeland. The Battalion had travelled 140 miles from the starting point; three weeks had elapsed since the march to the Rhine had begun. Thereafter the marches daily grew easier, roads gradually improved, and billets became more comfortable.”
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Hereafter the only spectators who watched the passing troops were “children with close-cropped heads who stared, curiously from the roadside. Their elders remained discreetly out of sight, peering through half closed doors or shuttered windows at the marching columns.” Lt.-Gen. Currie was anxious about a potential German threat and issued a warning for them to remain “a close-knitted army in grim, deadly earnest” that afforded lurking German agents no “evidence of disintegration in your fighting power.” Discipline would remain strict. “In short, you must continue to be, and appear to be, that powerful hitting force which has won the fear and respect of your foes and the admiration of the world.”
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Finally, on December 12, the long march ended when the Canadian Scottish reached Bayenthal, a western suburb town of Cologne. Here they billeted preparatory to crossing Hohenzollern Bridge the next morning. “We have a large flat in an apartment house,” one soldier wrote of his billet. “The Hun gent occupying the house resents us very much; we had quite a row with him. The flat we have was occupied by a Guard's officer and his wife. They apparently fled in haste, for clothing, jewelry and money are lying about. I called the janitor but he refused to have anything to do with it.”

Friday, December 13, was dark with heavy rain. The men formed up at 0745 hours. As the Germans might oppose the crossing, the men were in battledress. By the time the order to advance came at 0830 everyone was drenched and shivering in the icy cold. Despite the discomfort, as the troops tromped along the cobbled streets of Cologne toward the bridge they sang lustily, deriving some pleasure from the fact their marching songs appeared to unsettle the small groups of Germans watching bleakly.

3
^rd
Brigade was to lead the division over Hohenzollern Bridge and the battalion commanders had drawn lots earlier to see which unit would be first. Peck had been unlucky, so the Canadian Scottish were third in line. He ordered bayonets fixed and the men “stepped on to the bridge which was the end of the road to victory.”
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On the other side Maj.-Gen. Archie Macdonell and his staff took the salute, as the battalion passed through the city to its assigned destination—the suburb of Heumar.

No resistance was offered and it became clear that occupation of the Cologne Bridgehead garrison was to be an exercise in tedium. The biggest worry came from persistent rumours that Canadian Corps and all the units therein were to be broken up and the men returned home on the basis of a priority system dictated by length of overseas service and marital status. General feeling in the battalion was that they should go home as they had served, together. Finally it was announced that, at a November 23 meeting of all divisional and brigade senior commanders, a unanimous decision had been agreed “that from every point of view it was most desirable to demobilize the Corps by Units and not by Categories.” Initially the Canadian federal cabinet maintained the opposing view, but when Currie dug in his heels the politicians had grudgingly agreed to the wishes of the Canadian Corps officers.
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On Christmas Eve, half the battalion attended midnight mass in a Cologne cathedral. The troops awoke on Christmas morning to find snow blanketing the ground. In the windows of houses, Christmas trees adorned with lit candles provided a festive setting. The real celebration came, however, on New Year's Day when, by companies, the battalion held sumptuous dinners.

The new year proved a time of ever-quickening numbers of farewells. On January 3, 1919, Peck departed for Canada after emotionally reviewing the battalion.
In absentia
he had stood as the Unionist candidate for the British Columbia riding of Skeena in the December 1917 federal election and won. But he had refused any suggestion of taking his seat in the House of Commons until his army duties were done. Now he was free to go. Peck would hold the seat until 1921 and then turn to provincial politics—sitting in the British Columbia legislature from 1924 to 1933.

The battalion passed to James Scroggie, but it would be under the temporary command of Major John Hope that the Canadian Scottish turned their backs toward the Rhine on January 6 and left the army of occupation. Along with the 13
^th
and 14
^th
Battalions of 3
^rd
Brigade, they were the first units of 1
^st
Division embarked by train to new billets in Belgium. By January 18, the entire division was gone with 2
^nd
Division and the rest of the Canadian Corps units engaged in the occupation completing the move on February 6.

1
^st
Division set up at the city of Huy, midway between Namur and Liège. The Canadian Scottish cared little for their new billet in the nearby village of Antheit, which most agreed was “a 'ell of a 'ole, everything mud, Belgium at its worse.” But the inhabitants took the soldiers into their hearts and would do almost anything to ensure their comfort. The truth of this was realized on February 19 when RSM James Kay staggered off the parade ground “dazed with fever, and died the same night.” It soon became evident that the RSM had been suffering influenza throughout the German occupation period, but refused all entreaties that he report to the medical officer for examination and treatment. His death was a serious blow, but the men were touched when Antheit's burgomaster appeared with a delegation of citizens and requested that Kay be buried in the village cemetery where they planned to erect a memorial to the men of their Commune who had fallen in the war. Permission for Kay to be interred there was quickly granted. Years later it would be reported to members of the battalion in Winnipeg that the villagers had decided from the outset that Kay's grave would “ever be cared for and kept in repair. It is always covered with flowers,” they were told.
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Despite the generosity of the villagers, Antheit remained a gloomy waypoint on what the Canadians considered a drawn-out journey home. The demobilization process seemed needlessly protracted. There was resentment, too, over a decision by Currie that 3
^rd
Division would be the first returned. Logically, the 1
^st
Division should have been first to go, for it had the longest record of service, and then 2
^nd
Division. But these had ended up in the vanguard of the Rhine occupation force and so the order of return ended up jumbled. It helped little that many men in 3
^rd
Division were conscripts with comparatively little overseas service.

Finally, on March 19, 1
^st
Division began embarking at Le Havre for passage to England. The Canadian Scottish boarded a train on March 22 for the port city. Everyone was happy to be one step further along. For the officers the task “of killing time and keeping the men interested in the awful period of waiting to go home” was becoming an unwelcome burden.
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The British transport
King Edward
carried the battalion across the Channel on March 26 and arrived late the next day at the ill-named Bramshott Concentration Camp. Here they lingered another month, enduring medical board examinations to determine whether men qualified for various disabilities and taking what periods of leave were granted. At long last, at 0300 hours on April 26, the battalion travelled by train to Liverpool. By 1845, the men were aboard the
Empress of Britain
and the ship sailed that night for Canada. On Sunday, May 4,
Empress of Britain
entered harbour at Quebec. Cyrus Peck stood on the wharf, greeted his men ashore, and assumed their command for the journey westward.

Although the Canadian Scottish had been a mongrel composed of men from regiments that hailed from Hamilton, Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Victoria, the army had decided in 1917 to designate the 16
^th
Battalion as a Manitoba-based unit. So it was in Winnipeg that the Canadian Scottish mustered at 0951 hours on May 7, 1919, for its final march and disbandment. Few of the local citizenry turned out. Several battalions that had been entirely raised by local militia regiments had already returned and been disbanded here. A great deal of tension also prevailed, with talk of a general strike in the air. The arrival of more soldiers only increased the anxiety that restive labour and local government authorities might be headed for a showdown.

Accordingly, noted the battalion's official historian, the reception was “only lukewarm. After detraining [the Battalion] marched out of the Canadian National station on to Main Street and along the wide thoroughfare to Portage Avenue. It turned up Portage, passed and gave the salute to the District Officer commanding; and afterwards, at a point clear of the city's traffic, without being given the opportunity of saying one word of final goodbye, Col. Peck was ordered by a staff officer to halt his battalion on the street, and give it orders to right turn, and dismiss.”