Chapter XXII: The Winter Months

November brought with it a week of steady rain, and we knew the winter months were at hand. In less than two weeks our trenches, once the pride of the division, were a series of collapsed heaps where the sandbag walls had been undermined by the seepage of water.

But we suffered nothing like the discomforts endured by the British troops during the previous winter. Rubber boots reaching to the thigh were issued, sparingly at first, but gradually until every man had a pair, and whale oil and spare socks were available in large quantities to aid in the fight against trench-foot. Nothing, however, could prevent the mud, which lay a foot deep along the gangways of the trench. Pumps were issued, but the mud was too thick to pump; our only hope lay in drainage, and by the time proper drains were constructed the mud was too thick to run, even though we were on a hill top.

So we pumped and drained and built new sandbag walls all winter, and as fast as one portion of our line was renewed another portion would collapse, or, more disheartening still, be shelled to bits by the big "minenwerfer."

This was a German gun brought up to this front to counteract our trench mortar. Throwing a shell about six inches in diameter of high explosive, it could in three bursts do more damage than a whole company could repair in a night. And regularly twice a week three shells were dropped along Delta Road, a communication trench forming the third side of the little salient.

The effect of the "minenwerfer" was very local, however, owing to the thinness of the shell wall, but such men as it killed were not a pretty sight. Fortunately, too, the shells could be seen both by day and night, and rose to such a height before dropping that men could scamper for shelter from the threatened spot. But no dug-out could withstand its explosion, and a series of craters, eight or ten feet in depth and twelve feet in diameter, marked the "minenwerfer's" work.

Every battery that covered our area had, by the time winter was over, reported they had silenced "Minnie," but when we left that area months later she was still doing business at the old stand.

To relieve the monotony of this sort of thing the Canadian Corps organised a series of night raids on the German trenches.

The first, and most brilliant, of these was conducted by the 5th and 7th Battalions of the 2nd Brigade on a barricade or forward trench that had been constructed by the enemy near our old position opposite the Petite Douve Farm.

This raid was made on a villainous night blacker than Egypt during the plagues and raining as only Flanders can.

With faces blackened with charcoal, the raiding parties crept out to the enemy wire and cut it strand by strand, a process lasting several hours. During this time the cooks of one of the battalions carried out pannikins of hot tea to the men who were lying in the mud hacking at the wire.

Finally the path was reported clear except at one point where a deep ditch full of water could not be crossed, and at the appointed moment the raiding parties swooped in on the enemy trench.

Secure, as they thought, on such a vile night, the enemy were completely surprised, but put up a stubborn resistance. An officer and about thirty men were secured as prisoners, and where resistance was more determined the enemy was driven from his trench with bombs. Then on a given signal the raiders returned to their own trenches, bringing helmets, saw-tooth bayonets, and Mauser rifles as souvenirs of their midnight call.

By this time the alarm had spread through the German lines, and his artillery, in response to red signals shot up by men very lately deceased, began to pound their own trench, thus catching their own bombing parties, who, now the trench was only occupied by dead and wounded, had regained the barricade.

But we had another surprise awaiting them. A field-gun had been man-handled up to our front line and at point-blank range proceeded to blow the barricade to bits. This was done and the gun successfully withdrawn by a car from a motor-machine-gun battery, in spite of the fact that the first car sent for this purpose had to be hauled from the ditch into which it had skidded.

So thorough had been the preparations, and so well organised the raid, that an account of it was published in the orders of the French Army as an example of efficient preparation.

The prisoners taken in the Petite Douve affair had boasted of the preparations they were making for a gas attack on a scale hitherto unknown, and on the Sunday before Christmas the enemy made another attempt to gain the Ypres salient by this means.

Early in the morning of the 20th the smell of gas was evident even down as far as our position a few miles south of the salient, and our guns began a desultory bombardment of the enemy lines. Thinking we were as deficient in artillery as in the previous April, the enemy infantry advanced in mass formation about 9 o'clock. Then our artillery did open fire. About noon another attack was made, and also failed without a yard of our line being lost.

There were no further attempts!

On Christmas Eve we were relieved by the Toronto Battalion and marched out to rest billets in divisional reserve.

It was a weird march out. Not a rifle was fired nor a single flare shot up from either trench as the two battalions interchanged.

We wondered if on the morrow there would be the handshaking and hymn-singing that had characterised the first Christmas of the war; a routine order had been published forbidding such demonstrations of good feeling, but it was hardly necessary--flame projectors and asphyxiating gas had attended to that!

Everything was very peaceful in the little hamlet when we arrived, however. It was a clear, starlit night, a little snow in the fields, and the dark silhouettes of the houses and church loomed up against the clear sky. The little church was in darkness--no midnight mass was being sung this year--and we slipped into our various billets in silence, very tired and not a little homesick.

Christmas Day the men were marched into Bailleul, where a big dinner was given them by the officers of the battalion. In the evening another dinner was held for the officers themselves. There were the usual toasts and speeches, and before the party broke up Captain George T. Richardson asked for a few minutes' silent prayer for those who would not be present at our next dinner. It was a wonderful tribute to his sincerity that this was granted, for the evening was well advanced, and soldiers, as a rule, dislike having their religion tampered with by anyone but chaplains and other authorised personages.

Poor George! he was the first of us to go but a few weeks later!

We relieved the Toronto Battalion on the 29th, giving them a chance to celebrate the New Year in a similar fashion.

Then the second week in February we attempted a raid similar to those made on our right and left by other battalions. The most obvious point was selected for the attack, and, by an unfortunate chance, a night when the moon was nearly full.

As a result we were unable to get the wire cut, and the proposed raid was cancelled, the enemy having men dug in amongst their wire watching it.

For some reason or other Captain Richardson, who was in charge of the affair, again went over the parapet, possibly to see that all were safely in, and was discovered a little later fatally wounded in amongst our own wire. He passed away a few hours later in the little dressing station at the Support Farm.

So died a man who never gave a command he would not himself have executed willingly, and whose character and ideals were such that all who knew him envied him.

And on his grave his brother officers placed a wreath with these simple words: "He played the Game."