that day and some times they were all pretty warm. In addition to the three advances that fritz made against our battalion front there was a long unbroken string of enemy troops passing through the valley to our left at about 600 yards distance. From the apex of A Company’s position I could bring fire on that procession and did not waste any time, but kept at it with all the cartridges I could rustle. There were a lot of discarded cloth bandoliers full of shells lying about in the mud and in odd corners. These we dug out cleaning them off enough to get them through the rifle. They were perfectly good shells too, not a misfire in the lot.
Lieutenant Durand was in command of the position on the left. Wounded in four places he kept at it keeping his platoon right up to scratch. I could tell by the volume of their fire that they were making hay on that endless line of Bavarians that trailed past through the valley to our left like a caribou herd around the east end of Lake Athabaska. Some of those heinies walked as though they were drunk or doped with something. If you ever saw a drunk they too break into a run, and noted the hard bumpy way that his heels strike the ground, as though they could not gauge the distance to earth. That is the way they ran, and at the same time they kept up a sort of monotonous chant while blowing intermittently on some sort of hoarse sounding horn that reminded me of the old conch shells they used in Nova Scotia to call the workmen for dinner. I was told that this horn was a national relic of Bavaria handed down through generations of warriors way back to the time of Attila The Hun and had sounded over many a field of slaughter.
Durand began to worry about his supply of ammunition and sent corp. Pozer a native of Quebec over to our section of trench to see if there was anybody with lungs still working good enough to pack ammunition across to his platoon. Pozer came to me and asked if I would go. I went along with somebody else, I don’t remember who, and being too weak to handle a case we ripped the cases open taking as many bandoliers as we could drag, crossing the open stretch three or four times. Between strangling periodically and flopping in the mud to dodge sweeps of machine gun fire, I was all in at the end of the second trip and sat down to rest and get some breath at the right of Durand’s breast’work. Here I had my last view of Duncan Robertson, my chum who had enlisted with me at Kenora. He was in charge of one of the colt machine guns attached to Durand’s sector. His gun had broken down and he was returning from a trip over to the right of the battalion with some spare parts under his arm. We exchanged grins and he hurried on his way. I heard his gun start to chatter about 10 minutes later but it did not last long. There was a German aero plane swooping up and down, up and down over our lines, spotting for machine guns. As soon as Duncan got well started again, there came over a salvo of shells from the enemy batteries that buried Duncan’s gun in a volcano of death. He was killed instantly, his head and shoulders blown off. He came from Fernlea, Pern Hill, and Isle of Aran. It must be a good place.
After the session of carrying ammunition I was nearly all in and beginning to get sort of dopey, and groggy with a hazy sort of feeling that seemed to be creeping, creeping right into my vitals. I had just survived a spasm of choking and lay on the ground. A man came along with a jug or crock of rum, hailed me, telling me that some of the boys had taken a shot of it and it had helped them. I laid on one elbow and took a drink of that stuff that would have jolted a horse. It was a case of kill or cure, and I was at the stage just then where I didn’t worry much about which way it went. When that slug of (fire water) hit the bottom of my tortured stomach it rebounded and came back as though it had hit a set of coil springs. I threw out about a pint or more of a bright green sort of jelly, having a rough passage for a few minutes, with the yellow foam and froth from my mouth and nostrils shutting off my wind for so long. I thought my heart and brain would burst before I got a gasp and gurgle of breath again. I lay still for awhile after this but soon started to take interest in things again, upon hearing Big Dave Halcrow raving and cursing like a berserker at the breast’work. I woke again to the fact that there was something doing and crawled to the parapet and to the rifles for they were coming over again. There were still some men left to man the rifles and say “no” to them. To the right they swept back the 5th Battalion pouring past us taking our right-hand platoon in their drive. Sergeant Aldritt, who was a sort of athletic instructor around the Y. M’ S. swimming baths etc. in Winnipeg, was manning the machine gun in that platoon that was swamped and over run in that drive by the square heads. Aldritt worked his gun right up to the time the enemy swarmed over the breast’works having done some good execution. The remainder of that platoon was captured, officers and all, spending three years in Germany.
Good old A Company was sticking out into the swamp like the bow of a ship in a hurricane with Durand’s platoon still doing business on our left flank. Lipsett figured that we were in danger of being cut off and grabbed cooks, batmen, clerks, transport men, and anyone else on two legs, sending them in to form a connecting link from our left flank back to where there were some more of our troops.
The Kilties on our left had fallen back too and were out on the point of a salient. This rabble pushed forward and got to grips in one place with the Germans with their bayonets. A lad by the name of Eddie Platt got up against a big German about twice his size and had to stick him or be stuck. Now it is a very revolting thing to some people to have to use the cold steel and Platt had to summon all his nerve to do it. He stuck fritz alright fainting with revulsion immediately after. Now there had been some troops sent up to try and relieve or to support us.. They were the 8th Durham’s and green troops of the Territorial Army who had come to someplace in France to finish their training before being sent into the line. They were grabbed and rushed in to stem the tide of the German drive. A remnant of them survived the advance that they made down that two miles of slope over exposed ground to our position. They must have been exposed to terrific fire during that advance and all credit is due them as green troops for ever getting there at all. I think some of our own men also made that advance. Part of company, or No. 3 company who had been in reserve were sent forward to join us on the spear point of the defense. Most of the officers and N. Co’s of the Durhams were killed before they got to us with the remnants of the rank and file being a bit bewildered and shaken by this sudden drop right into Hell itself without any warning or preliminaries. Finding friends that still had a stiff spine and could still curse while facing the right way they were alright and took hold with a good heart. Right here I noticed a sort of queer comedy right in the midst of all the horrors.
There was at least one officer of the Durhams that got to the front line. He was a treat to see. He must have been spawn of the Creme De La Crème for he had the airs, the monocle, spotless cream-colored pipe clay faced breeches and all the rest of it. His servant carried an air cushion which he blew up and placed on the parodos to keep the cream colored breeches spotless. Here was the meeting of the extremes if ever it was. He adjusted the monocle and chatted in the best afternoon tea manner for 15 or 20 minutes without ever saying anything that had any bearing on the doings around us. The wildest imagination could not picture any object more utterly out of place on earth or yet in Heaven. He lasted about 20 minutes when a shell swept him away into the void along with large chunks of our ragged parapet. If he wakes in some drawing room in his special Heaven, he will no doubt still have the monocle uncracked and will enquire as to what those rude fellows were doing.
Conan Doyle said St. Julien was the greatest unsupported infantry defense in military history and he had an uncanny way of getting at the truth of things. The proper relation of all these events one to the other and their proper sequence is a bit blurred to me now. I cannot place them in their exact time and place, for a person in the thick of a mess like that is not always able to see it as a whole or remember dates and statistics.
The Northumberland Fusiliers worked their way into our line. I think it must have been the night after the gas attack and now our boys who still represented what was left of the L. B. Ds. were outnumbered by the newcomers.
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