among themselves and finally started to encircle the hedge. I could hear them crawling outside the hedge in front and on both sides of us. I thought we had stayed long enough so poked Closett in the ribs and said go! We ran for the open gate behind, which was probably 50 yards away. There were broken tiles, brick, glass, and other rubbish under foot. We made quit a clatter as we broke cover. Before we got through the gateway fritz shot up a flare light from the orchard. We heard the putt and hiss of the flare going up and flopped flat, laying still until it burned out, when we were up running again. From the gate we ran about 80 yards to the left where there was a sort of embankment or terrace under a thorn hedge. We flopped behind this and peering through the hedge listened for awhile.
Then I happened to think about Corp. Gray and his six men. They might walk, unsuspecting right into the big German patrol, which I knew, must be at least 20 or 30 strong. I sent Closett back on the run and he was in time to intercept them just as they were coming out to look for us. They came out quietly to where I distributed them along the low side of the terrace. Orders were to start nothing rough but to make sure that the enemy did not attempt to fortify the farm. I went back to the lines soon for I had been out for over 18 hours and was tired, hungry, thirsty etc. The enemy patrol prowled about examining the place quietly and then made off without disturbing anything. I had often thought that if our officers had hurried a big patrol out, there working in from a flank quickly, they might have captured the lot.
In addition to all the dead cattle and pigs in that valley there were two or three live hogs roving about. We saw a huge white one mooching along at the front of the enemy trench at the edge of the woods one morning. Fred Barker shot it. We had found evidence while we were out on patrol, that these hogs were living off the bodies of the dead.
One morning after being on night patrol and feeling the need of a sleep we crawled out a few feet back of the breast’works and lay in the sun for a nap on a smooth patch of the hard baked clay. I think it was Corp. Gray and myself along with a couple of others. This spot must have been visible to an observer on the higher ridge back of the German lines for we were rudely awakened by a couple of small shells bursting right alongside us. I could reach over and touch the edge of the nearest hole. The shells were too small and slow traveling to be whiz bangs, nor they did not seem like trench mortars.
The little Cockney Batman before mentioned developed a sort of ghoulish tendency while we were in this part of the front. He started to pry teeth from the skulls of the enemy dead and collect other beautiful trinkets which he kept for souvenirs. I suppose his officer had to carry them too when they marched.
Things remained quiet here during are stay in Death Valley, and there were no outstanding events that I can recall now. I don’t know what unit held this part of the line when the big German drive started for Calais a week later. They must have had an unpleasant time unless there were new trenches dug further back during the intervening week before the big smash. The warm spring weather was rapidly ripening things on that valley. From that place we were moved to the left marching up the line again through St. Jean and St. Julien, then finally on down a long gentle slope to the bottom of another valley. Here again the ground was too wet for trenches and breast’works had been built instead.
St. Julien
The breast’work on our battalion frontage was not continuous but was built in sections with spaces in between that were innocent of any defense. In going from one section to another you hurried across the open. On our right there was a gap in the line 500 yards wide very low, and wet with a small stream in the centre. This stream had a fringe of polled willow stumps and small scrub along its course. On our left the line swung back a bit and formed a sort of re-entrant. There was a battalion of Canadian Kilties holding this sector. I think it was the 5th Battalion on our right at the far side of the 500 yard gap. The breast’works here were in better shape and there were some support trenches of a sort close behind. There was a low almost imperceptible ridge on our front, and from our centre to the right, the ground also rose ever so slightly for about 400 yards ahead. There you could see the enemy’s earthworks that appeared to be on slightly drier ground as usual. There was a slight salient there in the German line along this swelling of the ground. This part of their line appeared to be strongly trenched and it was from here that they let loose their first great gas attack on us. It was discharged from reservoirs or cylinders and wafted across on a slow sluggish breeze.
Col. Lipsett was a very energetic sort of commander wanting to be very thoroughly informed about every thing on his part of the front. Sgt. Knobel was a twin brother of his as far as energy went. They certainly kept us scouts on the jump day and night. Every foot of a new frontage had to be gone over, right up and into the enemy’s wire and in some cases into his trench.
We were out practically all night every night here and then on sniping and observation work during the daylight. There was a small cottage still standing on the crest of the low ridge opposite our right flank, close up against the enemy parapet and well inside his wire. Lipsett ordered that we investigate this building. We made a preliminary patrol or two to size things up getting the lay of the land. The nights had turned still and rather cold with a white blanket of mist verging on frost lying in a shroud in all the low sags and along the water courses. About the first night in we stripped off all unnecessary clothing to make crawling easier. We went up a long drainage ditch that angled off straight as an arrow from the close vicinity of the cottage mentioned above. This was touchy work for an enemy could look down the whole length of that ditch and shoot down it very nicely with a machine gun. It had been dug through the wet clay and the sides sloped up at about 45 degrees on both sides. There was a stream in the bottom about three feet wide. We went up this bit by bit flattening into the mud when a flare rose or when a chunk of mud or a rock dislodged and went splashing into the water. Getting up within a few yards of the cottage we saw and heard a great deal of activity going on. There appeared to be scores of men working at something. They were sawing, hammering pounding and digging all the time talking like 300 Quebec Frenchmen.
We gathered one bit of information from watching and listening to the forward part of the gang. They were making movable sally ports to put through their wire entanglements. They were making an arrangement something like a saw horse in form, only much higher and longer, to be strung with a network of barbed wire. Then a zigzag road is cut through the main mass of wire entanglements, and these horses are set in these opening to let their troops pass out through the wire to the attack. They were installed in a zigzag fashion so they would not be readily detected.
On returning from the drainage ditch I was detailed to go on a listening post with another victim for the balance of the night. The post was at the creek at the centre of the 500 yard gap on our right flank. I was unable to go to get any heavier clothing, so I spent a very cold, and exceedingly miserable time trying to shiver myself warm till daylight, watching and listening in the blanket of mist along the water course. It is a penetrating sort of cold in that country on an early spring morning before dawn which gets into the very marrow of your bones in a very different way than the dry crisp cold of Canada.
I could hear railway trains pulling in from the north and east behind the enemy lines all that night. Bands were playing with their drums beating as the troops detrained and marched away. We heard this same thing every night right up to the day of the big attack and reported same to our officers. We were supposed to be in this sector four days and then be relieved by some other unit. The four days came and went with no sign of the relief troops. The enemy shell fire gradually got heavier as the days went on. We who had seen the sally-ports being made, heard the troop trains pouring in day and night for a week or so knew that we were in for it hot and heavy. Every thing pointed that way. Our battalion transport had been shelled and broken up on the St. Julien road. For the last four days of that battle we had very little, if any, food or water. We got a dose of combined tear- gas and chlorine gas on very empty stomachs which no doubt contributed to the number of deaths from gas. With food in our stomachs it would not have gotten such a quick and deadly hold and we would have vomited some of it out. The enemy artillery fire got very heavy during the
