when we were able to see around a bit in the morning. The trench was in a very filthy and unsanitary condition. There were no provisions what ever for sanitation and in addition to this the dead had been left all over the place. Their legs sticking through the parapet. Dead were in the bottom of the trench with only a very thin sprinkling of earth over them. Out in front you could see them lying all over the place, both French and German. Phil McDonald was put on sentry duty in the front trench as soon as we got in. All night at his post he smelled a powerful smell. Daylight showed that he was leaning against the soles of a big pair of German boots built into the parapet. The owner of the boots was built in too. Paddy Reill crawled into a small dugout shelter to snatch a bit of sleep during the night and woke up to find he was using a corpse for a bedmate and pillow.
Lieut. Durand, a fine big fellow, in command of one of our platoons had a little sawed-off batman of cockney vintage. Durand was big and strong but several times on the long and hard march up here he had hitched and shifted his pack finding it heavy. Lo! and behold the Wee Batman had stuffed it full of his own belongings, including some choice souvenirs such as shell noses etc. Durand had lugged it all the way.
These Frenchmen must have been a lazy lot for the breast’work along here was very low, only one bag thick and patched up in the most slipshod manner imaginable. A 22 caliber rifle could have put a ball through it any place. The ground was too wet to dig down lower, and at any rate it was so full of filth digging it would have been almost impossible. There were no support trenches in the rear and God knows what would have happened in case of an attack. This place was known as Death Valley, it appeared to be well-named judging by the number of dead lying in it. It was a big wide depression in the plain with higher ground all around gently sloping into the bottom.
Directly on our front and stretching away for a couple of miles to the west was a long bare treeless ridge with its highest point about two and one half miles away and half mile on the left quarter. We were to get a closer acquaintance with the bare ridge off to the left a couple of years later. It was the Hill of Passchendaele. Our front line was at the bottom and following the base of some slightly rising ground along the south side of the valley. The bottom of the valley was flat, quite low, and wet in places. Opposite our right flank and at the far side of the flat was a straggling wood lot or bush. The German front line showed along the front of this, but was not occupied in full strength on account of it being too low and wet. Their main line followed the base of the hill further back and somewhat behind the woods. There was a re-entrant in their line about opposite to our centre, and here the lines must have been upward of 600 yards apart for some distance.
There were flares shot up from the German trench at night where it passed along the front of the wood lot, but studying it through the day we were of the opinion that these flares were only a bluff to give the impression that it was held in strength. To make sure of this we made a patrol at night, went over to this trench traveling along it for about eight bays without encountering any Germans. It was evidently only occupied at night in spots by patrols that shot up the flares we had seen. In the course of this patrol we came upon what had been a French outpost of eight men placed out in front of our right flank and facing the woods. This patrol or outpost had gone to sleep on duty one night. A German patrol came along and heard them snoring, crept up and bayoneted the lot. We had heard a rumor of this from the French and sure enough there they were, just as they had been left. Further to the left and in an open piece of ground we came on three Frenchmen in three separate shallow holes that they had tried to scoop out. They were about 15 feet apart and all facing the German lines. They looked so life like when we came upon them that we were startled and thought for a moment that it was an enemy patrol playing possum. They had evidently been caught in the open and tried to dig in but were killed before they could accomplish this. The whole valley was like this, and the night winds whispered over the dead in gusts and sighs , plucking away at their sleeves and moaning away among the willows along the water courses.
There was a ruined farm well out in the valley about 150 yards from the German line and approximately 400 yards from our lines. There had been several buildings in that location now mostly in ruins. What had been the dwelling house was still partly standing. The gable end toward our lines was still intact, but the opposite one had been blown down with the slate and tile roof sagging down on the upstairs floor. You could get in below, climb the rickety stair, getting in between the sagged tile roof and the standing gable, have a clear view of the enemy lines over a wide front. You had no real protection from rifle or machine gun fire but had good concealment and could look out between the slats and tiles of the sagged roof. Our O. C. wanted us to make frequent patrols to this place for fear Fritz might occupy it or fortify it with earth works making a strong point of it or a machine gun post to be later connected with his front line trench by saps constructed at night.
I wanted to study the enemy lines here, doing a bit of sketching, also trying to locate his machine gun and trench mortar positions, and try to get compass bearings and intersections on them where possible. Another scout by the name of Closett went with me one morning before day break and we reconnoitered the place eventually getting up under the sagged roof staying there all day as the valley was exposed, so any movement during daytime was sure to draw enemy fire. We took a bit of lunch and a bottle of water each. There had been a lot of live stock killed here laying all over in the enclosure around the buildings. Cows, pigs, horses , even dogs and cats and they also were all swollen up like balloons. The early April sun came out very hot and sultry beating down in that valley like a July day. Occasionally there would come a slight puff or breeze bringing the smells that we had to survive that day.
It was strong point alright. Directly in front at about150 yards was the enemy front trench. They had evidently tried to take the farm from the French sometime earlier. There in the hay field out front lay about 40 dead, lying in even rows on their faces like nine pins that had been knocked down in a bowling alley. They had full packs on their backs and were dressed in all the glory of the Prussian Army of 1914. Field grey from the tips of their toes to the top of the spikes on their helmets. They had dug a sap out some distance from the main trench using this as a jumping off point for the attack on the farm. Evidently the French had a concealed machine gun at the farm. There was about a dozen dead French out there also but somewhat closer to the farm house. How they met their fate I could not figure out, but there they lay in their spotless horizon blue uniforms. In the course of the afternoon one of our co. commanders got an idea in his bonnet to make a patrol working his way out there by following ditches shrubbery etc. taking about six men with him. I heard footsteps below on the gravel and broken tiles, and for a minute I did not know who it was. Closett took a sort of panic attack wanting to rush down and out with a lot of clatter which may have betrayed our presence. I had a job to hold him quit. A moment later I heard voices and I knew it was some of our men. I sat tight and let them away for I was not pleased with their stunt of exposing themselves and drawing the German’s attention to the farm. They were spotted alright and Fritz opened up with a splatter of rifle fire on them. They made off the way they had come and back to our lines.
When they got in they reported us two scouts as missing, believed captured, or killed. A lad from Kenora went down to hospital that day with a wound in his hand and while there wrote home about me going missing etc. My obituary came out in the home paper. I met the man that wrote it some months later up at Bulford Camp on the Messines Front. It was Billy Mitchell or (Slim Mitchell) and he still thought I was among the Angels.
We got down out of the loft about an hour after that patrol went back as it was sort of a trap up there with only one way of exiting and I was expecting a visit from Fritz for sure, now that the over-ambitious Capt. had advertised the farm. We had arranged for Corp. Gray and six men to come out that night after dark and relieve us acting as a listening post at the farm. Ten o’clock came and no patrol yet. I was just going to send Closett into our lines to see why, when I heard a noise in the orchard enclosure in front toward the enemy line. We had taken up a position in the rubbish at the centre of the farm court or enclosure flanked on three sides by the ruins. The whole place was enclosed by a thorn hedge with an orchard on the German side. Straight behind us was a gateway in the hedge. I could hear quite a large number of men moving about. They
