over us sometimes covering us with showers of wet mud, other times passing just over our backs to rip up the mud behind. There was a lad with us by the name of Johnston of fair complexion and medium height. He served on the Fire Department Team, at the Twin Cities at the head of the lakes before the war. A German flare light shot up in a high arc and came hissing down directly on top of him and they burn with a fierce white blinding light. Any movement on our part, even the slightest move while the light burned would have betrayed our position and sealed the fate of the whole patrol. He watched it come down coolly until it appeared certain to hit him on the legs. He spread-eagled his legs without another move until the light burned out and died between his feet. I suppose we were under this fire and shower of flares for upwards of five minutes though it seemed more like 45. Our teeth were loose in their sockets from setting them together and our nails nearly cut through the palms of our hands from gripping them. Not succeeding in their efforts to find us or failing to detect any signs of movement the Germans must have concluded there was nothing there for the flares and the m. g. fire ceased and we were able to make a safe get-away.
The lines were about 500 yards apart at this point and we had to cross a swamp creek fringed with polled willows before getting back to the vicinity of our own lines. Soon after crossing the creek we saw something moving back and forth in the vicinity of our own wire. Catching a glitter of light reflecting from something. We studied this and it turned out to be a lad from our battalion who had been sent out on listening post in front. Here he was with rifle at slope, bayonet fixed pacing up and down an improvised (tow path) as large as life. We sure had a good laugh at this exhibit. It was rare.
A. Currie was in command of the 2nd Brigade at that time and asked for a detailed map of the ground on our frontage. Sergeant Knobel ran a base line in daylight with a prismatic compass and tape among the old ruined houses and enclosures close behind our front. From this we worked forward and on into no-mans land traversing with luminous compass and tape at night. We had fixed the locations and got dimensions of all landmarks and physical features on the ground to be covered. What we could not get in this way was sketched in or located by intersection from three known points of observation in ruined houses. The position of these again was established by resection onto the original base line. We eventually turned in a map on a scale of 1 over 5000 (1/5000) and Currie got complimented for being well informed as to the ground on his part of the front line sector. This was supplemented by a series of panoramic sketches made by setting a telescope in a rest and sketching in all detail showing in its field of view. By swinging the scope the width of its field and repeating over a wide arc you could connect up with another arc sketched from the next O. P. to your flank. In this way we got a lot of detail of the German front lines that would not have otherwise been noted.
There was a patch of broad beans with high green stalks stretching from the German parapet outward toward our lines for some 75 yards. It looked like a place that might conceal a post for a m. g. a bombing post, or listening post at night. At any rate we needed it placed on our map, and I was sent out with compass and tape to locate and measure it. We worked across a creek with an old ladder used as a foot bridge, thence along a ditch marked by polled willows at intervals, till we came to the end of the last survey. A lad named Fred Barker was with me. It was too dark to see much, and there was a rise or roll in the ground in front that hid the German lines. Barker struck out on his own hook from here to try to locate the bean patch but came back unsuccessful in a short time.
The scout at this time was not equipped with a pistol, bomb or other convenient means of offence or defense in order to enable him to crawl easily and quietly through the mud, grass and pools of water. His sole companion was a long Ross with bayonet fixed. The breach and trigger mechanism soon became a solid ball of mud when worming along like an alligator through the soup. We used to squeeze a plaster of wet mud onto the bayonet in order to prevent its glitter from betraying us while in the enemy wire or in the vicinity of their flare lights. I now started off over the top of the rising ground in front, and was crawling down its far slope when a German flare showed me the outline of the bean patch across my path. I was now in dry stiff grass that seemed to make a very loud noise whenever I moved forward. Was there a post at the out end of it? I decided to listen for awhile and not hearing anything suspicious I went on to the edge of the patch lying in under the edge to listen again. I could hear someone crawling quite close. I flattened to the ground to catch the light filtering through from the far side of the patch. About 30 feet from me a German crawled past on his way to his own lines. I was uncertain as to how many more were at the point he crawled from, so I did mighty little moving and a lot of listening for a few minutes then went on to its end, took its width, and later its bearing with compass from the top of the rise in the ground I had passed on the outward trip. I often wondered if this was the first close contact of Canuck and German in the field. I know it was for the 1st Division but probably some of the Princess Pats had an earlier contact.
Fritz used to use search lights in those days to sweep our lines at night and the ground in front. These lights were mounted on an affair like an extension ladder used by city fire departments. This in turn was mounted on a small truck that ran on a narrow-gauge rail track following the course of his communication trenches. If a shell landed close to this outfit he could telescope the extension ladder affair and hurry the whole works by rail to a safer spot.
The night following my trip to the bean patch was wet with a fine drizzle of cold rain. Knobel planned to make a long patrol led by himself. Two nights before we had placed a ladder across the creek about 100 yards from our front. This had been used as a bridge for two nights. Some of us had suggested that it be removed each night after using it so that it, and the path across, would not show up to the aero planes in daytime and give away our line of travel, but this had not been done. Now on the third night we had just got nicely over and started along the old ditch when we heard a noise ahead. A large stone or lump of mud fell into the ditch with a splash and following this we could hear the clump, clump, and swish, swish in the grass as someone hurried away from there. Somebody was evidently watching our bridge for a purpose. We carefully crept forward a bit to where we could get the light showing over higher ground on each side and in front. On this work you hug the low places and any movement can be detected in the light at the skyline around you. We began to size things up. On either flank as far as you could see there was the usual amount of night rifle fire by the sentries and the usual amount of flare lights rising and falling. But in the section occupied by the cabbage patch or bean patch there was neither night firing or flares. Only silence, darkness and a thickening drizzle of rain. Then the search light started to sweep back and forth, away to the north back on the south, but it always paused for a space when it came to our sally port in the wire and our ladder bridge over the creek. We put two and two together deciding that the big German patrol that was in ambush for us that night could have the rain all to themselves and we went elsewhere that night.
Later on we lost one of our scouts by rifle fire while out on the left flank of our battalion on night patrol. Our left flank was in what they call a re-entrant or a deep concavity in our line and the unit next on our left had somewhat of an enfilade view of our left sector. I believe it was the 7th Battalion in there at that time. We had notified platoon commanders and sentry groups of the patrol but through some mistake the post of the 7th opened fire on us and W. Naylor one of our number, was hit in the groin by a rifle ball and due to the severity of the wound died a few hours later.
I got a taste of shellfire here one day at the time of the battle of Neuve Chapelle or the (Blunder of Neuve Chapelle). The Imperial troops at that point were to make a frontal attack on the German line and if successful in getting forward, we were also to follow it up and roll up the part of the line to the left of them on our front. During their attack we were busy putting over rapid rifle fire thickened up by our colt m. g. along with the 13 pounders and the lone 60 pounder. The attack at Neuve Chapelle fizzled out against great odds in artillery and other arms and we came in for reprisals from Fritz in the shape of shellfire from his field batteries. I was in the south end of a trench bay next to a traverse and in the opposite end of the bay was a man named Peacock. Both of us were plugging away at rapid fire as per instructions. Peacock was taking aim through a loop hole with his finger on the trigger when a shell took away the whole of the
