Brave Battalion (14 page)

Finally, three of the bombers appeared. Leaving two with the Wiltshires, Urquhart led the other on a reconnaissance toward a cluster of houses and trees he hoped might be the orchard. Only a few minutes out, the two stumbled upon a wounded Royal Montreal Regiment major, bleeding heavily through crudely applied bandages covering a multitude of wounds. Obviously dying, the major could only gasp that the frontal attack had failed. Ahead of him, Urquhart could now see dead and dying soldiers scattered inside and around the trench. Then an officer with strikingly fair hair came down the trench toward him and Urquhart recognized No. 2 Company's Lt. Ross Cotton, who reported the frontal assault's failure.

Urquhart headed back to confirm whether No. 4 Company had in fact been “blown to Hell” and soon found Hastings and what remained of his men coming slowly up the trench. When they reached the Wiltshire position, Hastings told the company to wait there while he and Cotton contacted either Captain Rae or the Royal Montreal Regiment commander, Lt.-Col. W. W. Burland. Finding the two men together, Hastings reported his company's situation. The three men agreed that the best the RMR and No. 2 Company could do was to stay in place while Hastings's men extended in a line from the trench to tie in with their right flank. Hastings was just about to take his leave when a runner arrived with orders from brigade to immediately attack the orchard. Burland quickly scribbled a note objecting to the idea that he and Rae both signed.
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Eventually a new message arrived from brigade that left their note unacknowledged and reported that the other two Canadian Scottish companies would take over their advanced position at dawn while the Royal Montreal Regiment moved to a position to the left on the south side of La Quinque rue. This would anchor the Canadian Brigade's left flank in with the 4
^th
Guards Brigade of 2
^nd
British Division. Meanwhile, to 3
^rd
Brigade's right, the 2
^nd
Canadian Infantry Brigade would be deployed.

Once these dispositions were fully in place on May 20, the two fresh Canadian Scottish companies would seize what had now been dubbed Canadian Orchard. At the same time, 15
^th
Battalion (48
^th
Highlanders of Canada) would advance to rue d'Ouvert, about 250 yards to the east. Shortly after dawn on May 19, the two beaten-up Canadian Scottish companies withdrew via a system of badly damaged German trenches. “Sight of these trenches was very terrible,” Urquhart thought.
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“Although in after years some of those who were present then … witnessed many desolate battlefields … none surpassed in grimness the scene they saw that morning at Festubert. It is true that later in the war, especially at the Somme and Passchendaele, the artillery battered buildings, villages and the earth into an unrecognizable pulp, but the completeness of this mutilation often served to cover up the human side of the tragedy which, at Festubert, stood revealed in all its nakedness. Smashed rifles, torn, blood stained equipment and clothing were strewn over the battlefield. The dead, mainly British, lay thick around. They were scattered amongst the multi-coloured bags, black, blue, gray and white of the breastwork, thrown broadcast by the bombardment. One man stood in the trench, in an eerily life-like attitude, the hand up to the head where the fatal bomb fragment had pierced, as if listening for the movement of an oncoming enemy; some were locked in an embrace of death with a bayonet through one or other of the bodies.”

A couple of men discovered among the scattered equipment a pack covered in blood that had “Denholm” marked on it, and the insignia of the Royal Scots regiment. Knowing that the brother of their sergeant, Alexander Denholm, served in that British regiment, Denholm's comrades carefully steered him past the spot so he would not be left worrying about his sibling's fate. Later it was learned that the Denholm brother had been evacuated to England where he was recovering from wounds.
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From Festubert, Urquhart looked toward the German wire and defences and saw more British dead lying thick on the ground, “as if mown down by a scythe; the occasional man had fallen against the wire in the kneeling position, ready for the final spring which death had denied him. And there were more hanging over the ditches, half in, half out, killed as they attempted to cross; or in the open, in all sorts of contorted attitudes. Burial parties were making little headway, and in the muggy, wet morning the many corpses lying on the sodden, red-stained earth, gave forth a sweet, pungent odour which was almost overpowering.”
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The scene was utterly dispiriting. “Add to this the fact of it being a wet morning, tired feeling and [it] will be understood how terrible our sensations were. No. 4 Company's casualties for this attempt 44.” The company had lost almost a quarter of its strength in an action where not a man fired a shot or even got close to the enemy. Adding to the misery their packs had been rifled where they had been dropped during the night march. Urquhart had everything stolen but a blanket. Finally, back in a trench at Indian Village, they bedded down with what gear remained. “Tried to sleep but too cold and wet,” Urquhart scrawled in his diary.
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In preparation for the planned attack, Lt.-Col. Leckie established a battle headquarters in a trench in front of Festubert and from here a telephone line was strung along the communication trench to the forward companies. Hoping to gain some appreciation of the lay of the land and German defences around the orchard, two patrols were sent toward the orchard after nightfall on May 19. One patrol crept eastward along a trench that cut through a marsh close to La Quinque rue to a shattered house that proved empty. Lying less than 100 yards from the orchard's southwest corner, Leckie decided the house provided perfect cover and stationed two Colt machine-gun teams in it before dawn so they could protect the attack's left flank.

May 20 dawned warm and sunny. An uneasy quiet pervaded, as if each side waited for the other to renew the violence. Leckie spent the morning drafting and submitting a detailed plan of attack that he proposed initiating at 2215 hours. Brig. Turner quickly approved Leckie's proposal, but a short time later divisional command said the attack was off altogether.

Moments after learning this news, Leckie's headquarters was bracketed by a heavy German bombardment that began pounding Festubert at noon, but escaped damage. The telephone wire to the forward companies, however, was knocked out. Despite the heavy fire still lashing the communication trench, L/Cpl. Duncan Stewart and Pte. George Hardwick crawled along it and fixed all the broken sections.

After about four hours, the German artillery finally lifted and a runner reported to Leckie with instructions for him to meet Turner at Indian Village at 1530 hours. When Leckie arrived the brigadier said the Canadian Scottish would attack the orchard with a single company while on their flank the 48
^th
Highlanders would also be advancing. The assault was to go in at 1945.

Leckie protested because the attack would be in broad daylight with one company advancing over exposed ground against a heavily entrenched enemy. Why not go in after nightfall? Turner agreed that would be preferable, but it was also true that after the failed night attack at Aubers Ridge the British high command considered that the ability to control troop movement during daylight outweighed the disadvantages of exposing them to more accurate fire. Turner said the orders were there and they must comply.

With Zero Hour less than four hours away, Leckie raced back to Festubert and summoned Captain William Rae. Despite the fact the officer was still exhausted from the failed earlier attack, Leckie handed him command of the new assault because neither Major Cyrus Peck nor Captain Frank Morison, who respectively commanded No. 1 and No. 3 companies, had combat experience. Normally overall command of the assault would have fallen to the battalion second-in-command, Major Jack Leckie, but he was away on ninety-six hours' leave. Leckie never doubted that Rae was up to the task, for following the officer's performance during the attack on the woods in the Ypres Salient he had promoted him to major. But the promotion had yet to be approved at higher levels—a frustration for Leckie that led him to alternatively refer to Rae in the Canadian Scottish war diary by either rank.

The attack, Leckie told Rae, would be delivered by No. 3 Company with Peck's No. 1 Company supporting it by covering a communication trench that ran directly north from the battalion's forward line to the orchard. If No. 3 Company succeeded, Peck would then advance to where the trench entered the orchard and hook hard right from there to clear a fortified house designated as M10 on the maps.
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Since the two companies had taken up their forward positions they had been engaged in a fruitless effort to dig a defensive trench in the open ground between La Quinque rue and the communication trench No. 4 Company had tried following earlier to gain the orchard. Just two feet below the surface, the shovels cut into muck and water quickly filled the shallow trench to the brim. Only on the right flank where their front abutted the communication trench's meandering course was the semblance of a trench possible. On the left, meanwhile, their flank mired in a marsh that was so deep with mud that a gap existed between them and the Coldstream Guards stationed on its opposite side.

In the late afternoon, Rae set up an advanced battalion headquarters in a house on the south side of La Quinque rue about 150 yards behind the Canadian Scottish front line and summoned Morison and Peck. Already the operation was lurching into motion. As the two officers walked in, a short artillery bombardment began softening up the orchard. Rae conducted a hurried briefing and then sent them back to their companies. They had just minutes to form up their men in a long, strung-out line before the guns lifted and the Canadian Scottish began walking forward. Each man was spaced two paces apart. There was no cover. They simply walked stiffly into the face of a storm of machine-gun and rifle fire that one man later described as being “like sleet.” Another saw a terrified rabbit scurry past and shouted, “Oh, look at the bunny! Look at the bunny, will you!”

There was no covering fire from the two Colt machine-gun teams stationed by Leckie in the house. They got off just one burst before German artillery zeroed in and obliterated the place. Both guns were destroyed and their crews either killed or wounded.
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No. 3 Company's left platoon, under Lt. Espine Montgomery Pickton-Ward, wandered lost through the marsh and out in front of the Coldstream Guards. The British troops started shouting directions, but Pickton-Ward was struck dead before he could re-organize his command.
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Sgt. John Cochrane calmly took over, received some directional advice from a Coldstream officer, and then ordered his men to come about sharply ninety degrees. As the advance was renewed, he moved along the line dressing it back into a smart parade-ground formation despite heavy enemy fire. Cochrane was shot five times, but never faltered until the orchard was gained. Only then did he let the stretcher-bearers carry him away, but upon reaching headquarters he slid off the stretcher and personally reported to Rae.

The other platoons in Morison's company gained the road opposite the orchard only to find a deep ditch bordered by a hedge that was impassable except for a couple of narrow gaps. As Morison was about to run through one of these, a bomber yanked him back. “Bombers go in front of officers, Sir,” he barked, jumped the ditch, and ducked through the gap with the rifle platoons following hot on his heels in single file. Charging through these two gaps, the company quickly overran the orchard and swept it clear of the few Germans stationed there. At the orchard's southern edge, Morison ordered the men to dig in behind another hedge. Fifty yards beyond, a facing trench was held by the Germans, who could be heard shouting excitedly back and forth in surprise over the loss of the orchard.

The battalion's first objective gained, Major Peck's No. 1 Company began the drive toward the fortified house south of the orchard. Barring their advance was a German parapet, but the two leading platoons found a narrow gap and dashed through. “Immediately these men cleared the gap, several machine guns opened fire on them, and they were at the mercy of the enemy. The garden round the house was covered with a network of barbed wire, and between the breastwork and the house was open ground. A number of the men were killed as they cleared the breastwork and as many more in an attempt to storm the wire. A few of the latter group shammed death and lay in front of the wire until darkness fell, hoping they might then get into the house, but as the attack of the 15
^th
Canadian Battalion … had been unsuccessful, they finally withdrew, without attempting to get into the objective.” Seeing the fate that had befallen the two leading platoons, the rest of the company remained behind the breastwork. In the opening mêlée, Major Peck had been wounded and evacuated. No further attempt was made to take the house. In capturing the orchard, the Canadian Scottish achieved the deepest penetration of the German line by British First Army during the Battle of Festubert. Canadian Orchard would remain in Allied hands until the great German offensive of April 1918.
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