Brave Battalion (21 page)

On the night of June 11-12, the infantry moved through heavy rain to their forming-up positions. The Canadian Scottish returned to the Fosse Way trenches, now partially flooded, that they had occupied the previous week. Here they passed “a wet, cheerless day, a steady, misty drizzle soaking the clothing of the troops who, during those hours, lay in the open.” A prisoner brought in boasted that the Germans expected a counterattack, news that little raised the men's spirits. Another worry was that the ground was a quagmire. An intelligence report declared the “shell holes deep and wide, filled with water. The fallen trees in Armagh and Sanctuary Woods form serious obstacles to the advance of heavily laden troops.”
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Stuck in the open and enduring a day of misery ensured the men were all tired before they even began, but there had been no choice in the matter. The only bright news anyone could give Lt.-Col. Jack Leckie was that an old trench ran parallel at a hundred yards' distance from the German positions at Halifax. This would serve as a good assembly point for a quick dash into the German front line while still being far enough back to not fall within the artillery's kill zone. Leckie decided to put the platoons of the leading wave into the trench and then position his second wave in shell holes about 50 yards farther back. The third and fourth waves would remain at Fosse Way. It was a risky plan because of the likelihood of discovery while moving so close to the German front, but Leckie hoped the stormy night would conceal the first wave.

Nos. 1 and 2 Companies under Captains Stanley Wood and Roderick Bell-Irving respectively would lead with two platoons forward and two in support. They would attack in two waves, each consisting of two lines spread out in extended order. Two bomber sections numbering twenty men would be on the left and right flanks. The line of advance would take the Canadian Scottish across the front slope of Observatory Ridge, into the hollow of shattered Armagh Wood, and on to the final objective.

Wood and Bell-Irving led their men off at 2200 hours on June 12. Because of the need for stealth and the slow progress over badly torn ground, it took three hours for them to cover 1,000 yards and gain the old trench line and shell holes.
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But they arrived undetected and still had thirty minutes to prepare for the 0130 attack, which would go in the moment the ten-hour-long artillery bombardment lifted for the final time. But forty-five minutes before the guns ceased, the tempo of shelling suddenly surged to a terrific crescendo. When the guns stopped, with ears still ringing, the Canadians went over the top, advancing through a dense smokescreen and lashing rain that reduced visibility to mere feet.
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Each Can Scot carried a rifle with fixed bayonet and 270 rounds of ammunition, two grenades, one iron ration, a full water bottle, and three empty sandbags that would be used to create a defensive parapet at the objective. Every third man also carried a shovel. Behind the two infantry waves followed consolidating parties consisting of one hundred engineers and pioneers, seventy-five men tasked with carrying support materiel, and twenty-five wire-laying signallers. These men had a shovel for every second man while the tenth man in a section was loaded down with a pick, an axe, and bags of nails. One man in each party had a cross-cut saw for cutting trees, branches, or available lumber into usable lengths for parapet construction. The officers in the front ranks carried a multitude of flares—white to fire when Halifax fell, red when Vancouver was gained, and green to report that the attack was held up. Red flags would be raised on the flanks of the battalion at each objective.
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Right out on the front edge of their companies, Bell-Irving and Wood headed through a rain of German bullets that scythed men down on every side. Men lost their footing in the treacherous mud and, within seconds of going over the top, most were covered head to toe in gooey slime. Rifles and revolvers became clogged and rendered useless.
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Between the start point and Halifax, Wood—the southern gentleman from America—was killed by a bullet through the heart. Two lieutenants, Charles Cecil Adams and Howard James McLaurin (the latter commanding the second wave No. 4 Company), were mortally wounded in the charge. McLaurin's brother, Pte. Douglas C. McLaurin, had also served in the Canadian Scottish and been killed on April 5, 1916. On June 7, Lt. McLaurin had suffered an earlier wound but refused to go to hospital because the battalion was so shorthanded. If there was to be an attack, he had said, it was his “duty to stay with and lead his men in it.”
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Advancing with the riflemen for the first time were sections of men armed with the Lewis gun which, along with the Vickers, had replaced the Colt. One man could carry a Lewis, which weighed 26 pounds, and match pace with the infantry. It was still a heavy weapon to lug across No Man's Land and the complicated firing mechanism offered an “astonishing variety of stoppages.”
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Because of the gun's complexity and its rapid rate of fire, the gunner—designated No. 1—was supported by a crew of three to four men. The No. 2 man's job was to reload the weapon while two or three others carried spare magazines in special canvas bags. Each round-pan magazine was loaded with forty-seven .303-calibre cartridges. Eager to prove their worth, the Lewis gunners suffered heavily. The crew of No. 1 gun was chopped down to two men even before it stepped out into No Man's Land. Five times during the advance, other men pitched in to help operate the gun only to be killed, but the first two survivors made it all the way to Vancouver. No. 5's gun crew all died.

Despite the heavy resistance, the leading companies gained Halifax, the bombers blasting the trench with one grenade after another. Their rifles rendered useless by the mud, most of the infantrymen also resorted to chucking the two grenades they carried at the enemy. Once the explosions ceased, the men plunged into the trench and went at the Germans with bayonets. At the sight of the approaching steel, the majority of the enemy either surrendered or took to their heels. Clearly the artillery had done its job. Many Germans seemed dazed and incoherent—wandering about with no rifles or other equipment. Entire sections of Halifax had been obliterated and bodies were strewn everywhere.

Bell-Irving had just fired the white flare declaring Halifax taken and was rallying the men for a charge on Montreal when a machine gun opened up from a nearby wood and men began to fall screaming. Flashes from “a black jumble of fallen trees” betrayed the gun's location. Immediately a group of men rushed the position only to be driven to ground by its deadly fire. Suddenly the attack began to falter. Seeing a clearing to the left of the position that could be crossed quickly, Bell-Irving dashed alone into it and came at the gun from the flank. His revolver had been jammed earlier by mud, but he had snatched a rifle with fixed bayonet from a casualty. Now he leapt over the machine gun's parapet into the midst of the gun crew and in quick succession bayoneted three Germans. The fourth managed to grab Bell-Irving's rifle, threatening to wrest it away from the tiring officer, when reinforcements arrived and someone shot the German down. Still clinging to the rifle, Bell-Irving stood panting over the corpse. Then he tossed the gun aside, scooped up a new rifle with fixed bayonet, and calmly led the battalion toward Montreal.

Nos. 1 and 2 Companies moved out in line, no longer strong enough to form two waves. Close behind were the other two companies. As they left Halifax, the artillery finished working over Montreal and lifted. It was so dark, finding the way without straying either to left or right was almost impossible. They clambered over tangles of dead and wounded, shattered trees the artillery had felled as cleanly as an axe, slipping in the oily mud, tripping over webs of branches and stumps. Rifles still jammed, they threw grenades at any German position encountered. It was a dangerous practice as in the blackness they could easily grenade their comrades. More than a few men were wounded by shrapnel from a grenade thrown by a nearby friend. Montreal fell easily and the battalion paused to reorganize with all four companies now strung into one ever-shrinking line.

Before them the ground proved open, passage easier. Winnipeg fell in a matter of minutes and from there it was a quick dash to Vancouver where the enemy “offered no fight; the Battalion walked unmolested into its final objective.” It was 0215 hours. Major Cyrus Peck arrived minutes later, having kept the battalion's forward headquarters close on the heels of the rifle companies. Not until 0310 did his message reporting the news reach Leckie's headquarters. As with all the other objectives, the trenches here had been smashed by the artillery. In one small section a “stretch of the fire step was left upstanding giving a resting place to the crumpled bodies of its defenders, whose blood tinged with redness the water at the bottom of the trench.”

As dawn lit the sky, Lt. Pete Osler ignited the red flare that signalled success, mounted the parapet, and walked back and forth “waving it on high like the fiery cross of old.” But the battle was not over. Groups of Germans could be seen near the trenches attempting to rally a counterattack. Seeing this, and also spotting a German machine gun nearby, Cpl. Hugh Arthur Rees, a machine gunner with No. 2 team, brought the weapon into action. For the next four hours, as Vancouver was increasingly pounded by German artillery, Rees kept the gun in operation and broke up one attempted counterattack after another even when it became clear the enemy artillery was attempting to zero in on him. Finally a shell found the mark and the crewmen with him were all killed while Rees was badly wounded. It was the first act of heroism that would see the British-born twenty-three-year-old awarded a Military Medal for valour.

In the light of day, the Canadian Scottish looked back from the heights they held at the battleground crossed during a bloody night. Through “the blur of rain,” they saw “a dreary waste of desolation—sodden earth, water-logged shell-holes, shattered tree stumps, and limp, bedraggled groups of men cautiously picking their way back over the morass into a curtain of watery mist, which entirely obscured the rear area.” They had won at a terrible cost. From June 3 to June 14, the loss of officers—with ten killed—proved the highest number the battalion would sustain in any engagement over the course of the war. So many were dead or wounded that three non-commissioned officers—Gus Lyons, Jas Russell, and J.R.M. Ellis (all given commissions only the night before the battle)—ended up in senior positions—two commanding rifle companies and the third being second-in-command of one.
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During the period June 11- 14, 16
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Battalion lost five officers killed and four wounded. Other rank casualties totalled 23 dead, 155 wounded, and 65 missing.
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The other battalions suffered similar casualty rates and all achieved their objectives at about the same time, so that the Battle of Mount Sorrel was mostly concluded in just a little over an hour. The Germans effectively lost all the ground won on June 2 and the lines were restored as before. During the twelve days when the salient's survival had hung in the balance, Canadian Corps suffered almost 8,000 casualties while the Germans sustained 5,765. The Canadians and Germans glared at each other for the rest of the summer, in trenches lying 150 yards apart.
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On August 9, the Canadians left the salient and moved to the rear for a short respite before once again marching toward battle.

In 1915, the Canadian Scottish had spent only three weeks in the salient. This time it served four and a half months. Both sojourns had been costly, but the latest had brought two hundred more casualties than the first and a greater loss of “trusted leaders.” As the Canadian Scottish marched away they timed their step to a new piece of doggerel:

- AUGUST 9-OCTOBER 11, 1916 -

The River Somme bisects France's great northern plain, following a northwesterly course along a broad, marshy valley that leads to the English Channel. South of the river is lowland, while to the north high, rolling chalk grassland is cut laterally by tributaries. In the summer of 1916, the river generally stood between the two combatants with the Germans enjoying the benefit of possessing the higher ground. Between Peronne and Amiens, an eight-mile-long, 500-foot-high ridge running from Thiepval to Morval divided the watersheds of the Somme and its Ancre tributary that drained into the parent river east of Amiens. The Allies called this Pozières Ridge, after a village holding the highest point. Before the war this had been a gentle, bucolic land where farmers retained a somewhat medieval lifestyle—still clustering together in large villages from which they ventured during the day to work the land. Cattle grazed the rolling hills while grain, fodder, and sugar beets sprouted richly from the fertile plains and reclaimed marshes. The forests had been cleared long ago, so only a few scattered woods remained. The valleys created by the Somme and Ancre were home to wide, untamed marshes because both rivers regularly overflowed their banks.

Summer of 1916 saw this land gripped in the fury of war. In late August, the Canadians began their march to the Somme. The news coming out of the Somme battleground had cast the veterans into a fatalistic mood that even the most naïve reinforcements, those who still believed war a place where heroism and glory could be found, were unable to shrug off.

There had been no glory found on the Somme since the British Expeditionary Force's greatest offensive of the war began here on July 1. Despite its grand scope, Field Marshal Douglas Haig's purpose had been quite limited—to take pressure off the French who were being cut apart at Verdun by killing as many Germans in one place as possible. Slaughter had been the goal.