Wallace half-seriously called us “a pack of lazy dogs” for not completing the trench in our allotted time, but once the captain was out of earshot Sergeant Halstead, pretending he hadn’t heard a thing, quietly told us that we’d done reasonably well. Most courses only got a foot down into the rocky soil in that area.
“Remember, gentlemen,” he said, “if you are ever planning an operation, you and your men will dig a little faster when someone is shooting at you, but don’t expect miracles.”
Halstead was a grey-haired Cockney who had spent half his life in distant parts of the Empire. He had a large measure of common sense and I often thought he would have been far more effective commanding a brigade than supervising entrenching demonstrations on Salisbury Plain.
I spent the better part of a day in London on the single day’s leave we were given before moving to France. Most of my fellow officers had never seen the city before and we spent most of our time dashing in and out of pubs and sitting on the top of a double-decked omnibus driving about the city viewing the sites. Normally I loved London, but in wartime she looked grey and dismal. Everything was overpriced and I found it a bit disconcerting when the shopkeepers repeatedly asked us, “Ah, Canadian lads, eh? Looking forward to getting over there to have a go at the Hun?” I don’t think any of us were wildly enthusiastic about the prospect of battle. We were prepared to go, but deep inside we all wanted it to be safely over. Even then, we would happily have foregone the adventure ahead of us.
After a further two days of training, we were assembled on the edge of the parade square in the pre-dawn darkness under the light of a single weak electric street lamp. There was a steady, cold drizzle of rain and we were informed we were to get our kit ready, for that evening we would be entraining for Portsmouth to catch the night’s ferry to Le Havre.
Captain Wallace, leaning heavily on his cane, gave an encouraging and fatherly speech. “You should remember what you’ve been taught. Make examples of yourselves to the men and make all your decisions as if the shoe was on the other foot. Guide yourself by whatever you would expect as fair treatment from your platoon officer if you were a soldier. Do that and you won’t go too far wrong.” He assured us we would do splendidly and make our regiments, Canada, and the Empire proud. He sincerely bid us “Good luck and God bless,” saluted us, and limped off the parade square.
The train to Portsmouth was late, overcrowded, and reeked of urine and filth. We sat on our kit crammed three to a bench in what had been designated an officers’ car. We disembarked in a steady downpour amongst a throng of military police barking directions and indicating our way forward with electric torches. “Canadian officers to the right, Third Division Other Rank reinforcements to the left. Look lively please, gentlemen. Move along now.”
After standing around for what seemed like half the night, we were rushed aboard the ferry and ushered into what had was once been a dining salon. It was now emptied of all its original furnishings and was instead provided with a series of crudely made wooden benches. It struck me at the time that the normal comforts provided to the human race were deliberately downgraded and replaced with crude makeshift arrangements when it came to providing services for soldiers. It was not the last occasion I would be reminded of that observation.
The ship sailed an hour later. Our channel passage was a rough one and the ferry rolled and pitched like a cork. For such a short journey, we were a ridiculously long time at sea, and most of us were sick throughout the trip. I don’t know what made the crossing more unpleasant, the ship’s motion or being confined in close quarters with so many other men who were violently ill.
At Le Havre, our ferry docked shortly after dawn but for some inexplicable reason we were again required to wait on board for several hours. No explanation was ever given for our wait. When we disembarked, we were once again herded into a train station in a roughly fenced holding area and told to await further orders.
Across the yard from us, separated by a wooden fence, were the freshly trained reinforcements destined for the British Third Division. They looked haggard and pale, presumably after having spent an even more wretched night crammed below decks than had we. A British Red Cross refreshment trolley was trundled amongst us. Two pretty young women began unpacking it in order to sell us tea and buns. The two women doing the unpacking were stopped short by a stout, freckled Nova Scotian schoolteacher named Angus Kearsley who demanded in a deep voice, “Are the troops across the fence being served tea as well?”
The Red Cross team leader responded in a very plummy but pleasant English accent, “We have always served this side of the compound their tea first; and then, as soon as that’s done we get to the other side.”
Kearsley replied, “Unless the Third Division troops get their tea first, they’re wasting their time selling tea here.”
The men on the other side of the fence gave a ragged cheer and the two tea ladies graciously pushed their trolley around to the other side. We never did get any tea. It may or may not have sold out before it got to us. Kearsley was more than a little brusque and even though he was guilty of grandstanding, I admired him for his consideration.
Some time later, as we wearily shuffled forward to board the trains to take us to our respective forward areas, I noticed the wooden fencing and the warehouse-like structure surrounding us was probably originally built as a cattle shed that had been converted to a troop marshalling area. I wasn’t yet a superstitious man, but this seemed a very bad sign.
3
WE DETRAINED at a temporary railway siding in the middle of a field with the ugly name of “British Expeditionary Force Picardy Staging Area 3.” Shortly thereafter, we were met by a military motor truck that bounced us several miles along a dirt road to the divisional rear area. The lorry lurched to a halt in a motor vehicle compound two hundred yards beyond a cluster of farm buildings. A pair of dirt-encrusted motorcycle despatch riders lounged on their vehicles.
After struggling to gather my kit, I approached the motorcyclists for directions and was mildly surprised when, as I approached, they both stood up and came to attention and the soldier nearest me saluted smartly. I’d been saluted before and I felt no sense of pride in this, but for a brief instant I was startled by the realization that from that point on I really was going to be making life or death decisions on behalf of dozens of men I had never met before. Probably like everyone else in those circumstances, I felt terribly inadequate.
The despatch rider directed us to one of the barns, where a much cleaner but tired-looking staff officer with red tabs on his collar met us and told us we would be joining our units in due course. After a spate of checking and re-checking various lists, we were pointed in the direction of what had once been a small orchard and told to get some sleep because as soon as arrangements could be made, we would be sent forward to our units. We slept under our ground sheets that night but before I finally fell asleep I spent a long time listening to the distant rumble of artillery fire and imagining what lay before me.
Around noon the next day, the staff officer ambled over to the orchard and advised several of us that before nightfall we’d be leaving to join our units. At around three that afternoon, a ruddy-cheeked soldier with a Patricia’s cap badge and a thick northern England accent arrived and told me he was there to escort me to battalion headquarters. I said my goodbyes to my fellow trainee officers and as the PPCLI was then still serving with the British Twenty-seventh Division, I was headed north.
The Patricia soldier indicated a waiting lorry and when I made to climb aboard the back of it with him he laughed and said, “No,
