to display initiative only within the confines of a narrowly restricted and largely unwritten doctrine. Perhaps these shortcomings were more evident in hindsight. Like so many of us who endured the war, I’ve frequently wondered if the course of our lives was guided by extraordinarily stupid politicians and generals, or if it was a case of technology making stalemate and mass slaughter inevitable.
Whatever the truth, I still believe the mental straitjacket imposed on our peacetime militia caused us needless death and suffering, and the fact that larger European armies made similar blunders in no way vindicates our own leaders. The Canadians and, as I was to find out from bitter first-hand experience, the Germans were to rid themselves of much of this smugness as the war progressed. My generation of soldiers paid dearly for the sleepy complacency of our politicians and generals. As a veteran who lived in the mud and watched so many of my fellow soldiers crucified, I have long been troubled by the fact that none of those responsible for the manner in which that tragedy unfolded has ever been called to account for such deeply rooted neglect and stupidity.
My Canadian instructors were for the most part decent older men from across the country. They were men who had militia service and had volunteered for active duty, but against their wishes were placed in training positions. None of them had ever been to war; and for many, the militia had been a comfortable and highly sociable means of performing a civic duty. None of them had expected the kind of slaughter that was going on in France.
My fellow officers were men not unlike me – although few came from as comfortable a background as I did. Most were reasonably well-educated city men, the sons of doctors, clergymen, lawyers, and merchants who had joined out of a sense of obligation. Most were quite intelligent, fit, good natured and resourceful young men. I’ve often wondered who amongst us survived. I was the only one going to the Princess Patricia’s and except for one or two stray acquaintances during the war, I never saw most of them again.
I never did get a chance to see my family again before we went overseas. From Valcartier we took the train down to Quebec City and boarded the Star of India. Our ship was a rusting steam-liner that had not long before been employed on more elegant duties. Before being converted to a troop ship, the old Star of India ran genteel passengers in first class and a lucrative trade in second class and steerage conveying immigrants from Southampton to New York. She ended her days in late 1917, a day out from the coast of Ireland, when a U-boat torpedoed her.
We didn’t see any submarines; but for the first time in my life I saw whales. I was taken by their majesty and their sense of serenity. Early one morning when I was standing on deck, just after a torpedo drill, a very large blue whale surfaced alongside us. It blew a great geyser of water, flapped its enormous tail several times, and rolled cheerfully back into the depths. All of us on deck were thrilled and the men cheered spontaneously.
The only other occurrence of note had to do with our fellow passengers, a company of nursing sisters headed for duty in field hospitals. After my training in Valcartier, the sight and proximity of these lovely creatures was a real reminder of the new life I had volunteered for. Life in the army was much different from civilian life for many reasons, not the least of them was that it was an entirely masculine culture. I managed to chat briefly with some of the nurses before we landed in England, but for the most part we just exchanged smiles and nods.
The day we saw the whales I managed to engage two of the nurses in conversation at the ship’s rail. Long after the whales went their own way, we stared out into a steadily rolling grey nothingness. One of the sisters was a woman in her late twenties from Toronto and the other, whose name was Hannah, was closer to my age. She was a petite honey-blonde from Vancouver and she laughed easily. We chatted for almost an hour about so many things, none of which was of any importance and after these years I don’t remember any of it anyway; but I do remember the delight I took in her company. Years later, I began to think what a strange thing war was, for apart from its violence, it put us into situations that were completely different from the natural way of things. The ship was very crowded and although I kept my eyes peeled throughout the rest of the voyage I didn’t run into Hannah again, but I enjoyed her brief company immensely. On the last day out there was much guffawing and ribald comments one morning when, as part of the normal ship’s bulletins, the officer in charge of the trooping announced over the tannoy that the matron had complained of instances of “unseemly conduct and anyone caught embracing a nurse would be charged.”
Our arrival in England was something of an anti-climax. We’d all read about the delirious reception given to the Canadian troops when the First Division embarked in England. The papers were full of patriotic nonsense about how the locals were saying it was the largest embarkation of foreign troops since William the Conqueror. As a routine reinforcement troop ship, we docked with no fanfare and came ashore quietly one evening. On the quayside, we were given tea and scones by the Salvation Army. We waited for an hour for our personal kit, and a short time later we found ourselves on a troop train to Salisbury Plain. Our embarkation was a well-organized operation and proceeded with a mechanical efficiency that I found impressive. While the residents of Southampton slept in their beds, we slipped unseen through the countryside to our next stop on our journey to the trenches in France.
England was a much more intense repetition of what we had already gone through in Canada. I was put into an officer replacement training company. Our instructors, both officers and noncommissioned officers, were almost all British. Except for the sergeant major, who was a greying and leather-faced veteran of the Indian army, the instructors we saw the most were sergeants and corporals from the old regular British army. Most of them had received wounds of varying degrees of severity in the earliest days of the war. These NCOs had a cheerful cockiness about them and treated us firmly, but with a kindly good nature.
Our affection for the NCOs of the old army didn’t extend to our bayonet-training instructors, who were recently recruited bullies whose mission was to put “fighting spirit” into us. They were all younger, more athletic men, who worked us to exhaustion; and had never been to the front themselves. They took immense pleasure from their graphic descriptions of how to skewer the enemy on the end of a bayonet. Being of German blood – a fact I took pains to conceal – I had more reason than most to loathe these posturing men in their safe jobs.
The few British officers I met at the time were on the whole distant, and they exuded a sense of disdain for their colonial counterparts. It was hard to warm to them, and except for our company officer, a quiet and devout Captain Wallace from the Royal Scots, I never really got to know any British officers prior to arriving at the battalion so I was at a loss to form any kind of useful opinion of them. Wallace was a precise, if unimaginative man with a salt-and-pepper moustache. He had taken a bullet through the knee in October of 1914.
While I was in England, the British army ensured that we received instruction in those subjects that had been quietly glossed over in Canada. I learned how to site and maintain the Vickers and Colt machine-guns, how to remedy their stoppages, and how to clean them in the dark. Because they were still in short supply, we also received a half-day’s instruction on the Lewis gun, which was eventually to become our new light machine-gun. The Lewis gun looked like a wonderful weapon – except for the fact that the gunner had to expose himself by climbing on top of it to reload it.
Much to my relief, we studied the developing science of trench warfare. In a wooden hut we were tutored on the design of a battalion’s defensive layout using a carefully crafted plaster model. I never saw anything quite as elaborate or as flawlessly designed as our model – but the wire entanglements on the model proved to be child’s play in comparison to the murderous belts of wire we were to encounter on sections of the front.
One cold rainy night we spent a frustrating thirteen
