BEST OLUC 
 
 ALEXANDER MXiINTOCK,D.C.M, 
 
Class " 
 
 Book 
 
 Copyright N?_ 
 
 COPYRIGHT DKPOSrr. 
 
BEST O' LUCK 
 
 BY ALEXANDER McCLINTOCK, D.C.M. 
 
"The Distinguished Conduct Medal has been 
 awarded to Sergeant Alexander McClintock of 
 the Canadian Overseas Forces for conspicuous 
 gallantry in action. He displayed great cour- 
 age and determination during a raid against the 
 enemy's trenches. Later he rescued several 
 wounded men at great personal risk/' 
 
 Extract from official communication 
 from the Canadian War Office to the 
 British Consul General in NewYork. 
 
BEST O' LUCK 
 
 HOW A FIGHTING KENTUCKIAN 
 WON THE THANKS OF BRITAIN'S KING 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDER McCLINTOCK, D.C.M 
 
 Late Sergeant, 87th Battalion, Canadian Grenadier Guards 
 Now member of U. S. A. Reserve Corps 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 UAflM?) 
 
 n 
 

 COPYRIGHT, I917, 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 OCT 25 1317' 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 ©CU4767i7« f- 
 
TO MY MOTHER 
 
 MAUDE JOHNSON McCLINTOCK 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I Training for the War . 1 1 
 
 II The Bombing Raid 43 
 
 III "Over the Top and Give 'em Hell" 75 
 
 IV Shifted to the Somme . . . .101 
 V Wounded in Action 123 
 
 VI A Visit from the King . . . .153 
 
 [viij 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
BEST O' LUCK 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 I don't lay claim to being much of a 
 writer, and up 'till now I never felt the 
 call to write anything about my experiences 
 with the Canadian troops in Belgium and 
 France, because I realized that a great many 
 other men had seen quite as much as I, and 
 could beat me telling about it. Of course, I 
 believed that my experience was worth re- 
 lating, and I thought that the matter pub- 
 lished in the newspapers by professional 
 writers sort of missed the essentials and 
 lacked the spirit of the "ditches'' in a good 
 many ways despite its excellent literary 
 style, but I didn't see any reason why it was 
 up to me to make an effort as a war histo- 
 rian, until now. 
 
 [ii] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 Now, there is a reason, as I look at it. 
 
 I believe I can show the two or three mil- 
 lions of my fellow countrymen who will be 
 "out there" before this war is over what 
 they are going to be up against, and what 
 they ought to prepare for, personally and 
 individually. 
 
 That is as far as I am going to go in the 
 way of excuse, explanation, or comment. 
 The rest of my story is a simple rela- 
 tion of facts and occurrences in the 
 order in which they came to my notice 
 and happened to me. It may start off a 
 little slowly and jerkily, just as we did — not 
 knowing what was coming to us. I'd like 
 to add that it got quite hot enough to suit 
 me later — several times. Therefore, as my 
 effort is going to be to carry you right along 
 with me in this account of my experiences, 
 don't be impatient if nothing very impor- 
 tant seems to happen at first. I felt a little 
 ennui myself at the beginning. But that was 
 certainly one thing that didn't annoy me 
 later. 
 
 In the latter part of October, 1915, I de- 
 
 [12] 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 cided that the United States ought to be 
 fighting along with England and France on 
 account of the way Belgium had been 
 treated, if for no other reason. As there 
 seemed to be a considerable division of opin- 
 ion on this point among the people at home, 
 I came to the conclusion that any man who 
 was free, white, and twenty-one and felt as 
 I did, ought to go over and get into it single- 
 handed on the side where his convictions led 
 him, if there wasn't some particular reason 
 why he couldn't Therefore, I said good- 
 by to my parents and friends in Lexington, 
 and started for New York with the idea of 
 sailing for France, and joining the Foreign 
 Legion of the French Army. 
 
 A couple of nights after I got to New York 
 I fell into conversation in the Knickerbocker 
 bar with a chap who was in the reinforce- 
 ment company of Princess Pat's regiment of 
 the Canadian forces. After my talk with 
 him, I decided to go up to Canada and look 
 things over. I arrived at the Windsor Ho- 
 tel, in Montreal, at eight o'clock in the 
 morning, a couple of days later, and at ten 
 
 [13] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 o'clock the same morning I was sworn in as 
 a private in the Canadian Grenadier 
 Guards, Eighty-seventh Overseas Battalion, 
 Lieut.-Col. F. S. Meighen, Commanding. 
 
 They were just getting under way mak- 
 ing soldiers out of the troops I enlisted 
 with, and discipline was quite lax. They 
 at once gave me a week's leave to come 
 down to New York, and settle up some 
 personal affairs, and I overstayed it five 
 days. All that my company commander 
 said to me when I got back was that I 
 seemed to have picked up Canadian habits 
 very quickly. At a review one day in our 
 training camp, I heard a Major say: 
 
 "Boys, for God's sake don't call me Harry 
 or spit in the ranks. Here comes the Gen- 
 eral!" 
 
 We found out eventually that there was a 
 reason for the slackness of discipline. The 
 trouble was that men would enlist to get 
 $1.10 a day without working for it, and 
 would desert as soon as any one made it un- 
 pleasant for them. Our officers knew what 
 they were about. Conditions changed in- 
 to] 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 stantly we went on ship-board. Discipline 
 tightened up on us like a tie-rope on a colt. 
 
 We trained in a sort of casual, easy way 
 in Canada from November 4th to the fol- 
 lowing April. We had a good deal of trou- 
 ble keeping our battalion up to strength, and 
 I was sent out several times with other "non- 
 coms" on a recruiting detail. 
 
 Aside from desertions, there were rea- 
 sons why we couldn't keep our quota. 
 The weeding out of the physically un- 
 fit brought surprising and extensive re- 
 sults. Men who appeared at first amply 
 able to stand "the game" were unable to 
 keep up when the screw was turned. Then, 
 also, our regiment stuck to a high physical 
 standard. Every man must be five feet ten, 
 or over. Many of our candidates failed on 
 the perpendicular requirement only. How- 
 ever, we were not confined to the ordinary 
 rule in Canada, that recruits must come 
 from the home military district of the bat- 
 talion. We were permitted to recruit 
 throughout the Dominion, and thus we 
 gathered quite a cosmopolitan crowd. The 
 
 [15] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 only other unit given this privilege of Do- 
 minion-wide recruiting was the P. P. C. 
 L. I. (Princess Patricia's Canadian Light 
 Infantry), the first regiment to go over- 
 seas from Canada, composed largely of vet- 
 erans of the South African and other colo- 
 nial wars. We felt a certain emulation 
 about this veteran business and voiced it in 
 our recruiting appeals. We assured our pro- 
 spective "rookies" that we were just as first- 
 class as any of them. On most of our recruit- 
 ing trips we took a certain corporal with us 
 who had seen service in France with a Mon- 
 treal regiment and had been invalided home. 
 He was our star speaker. He would mount a 
 box or other improvised stand and describe 
 in his simple, soldierly way the splendid 
 achievements of the comrades who had gone 
 over ahead of us, and the opportunities for 
 glory and distinction awaiting any brave man 
 who joined with us. When he described 
 his experiences there was a note of com- 
 pelling eloquence and patriotic fervor in 
 his remarks which sometimes aroused the 
 greatest enthusiasm. Often he was cheered 
 
 [16] 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 as a hero and carried on men's shoulders 
 from the stand, while recruits came forward 
 in flocks and women weepingly bade them 
 go on and do their duty. I learned, after- 
 wards that this corporal had been a cook, 
 had never been within twenty miles of the 
 front line, and had been invalided home for 
 varicocele veins. He served us well; but 
 there was a man who was misplaced, in vo- 
 cation and geography. He should have been 
 in politics in Kentucky. 
 
 While we were in the training camp at St. 
 Johns, I made the acquaintance of a young 
 Canadian who became my "pal." He was 
 Campbell Macfarlane, nephew of George 
 Macfarlane, the actor who is so well known 
 on the American musical stage. He was a 
 sergeant. When I first knew him, he was 
 one of the most delightful and amusing 
 young fellows you could imagine. 
 
 The war changed him entirely. He be- 
 came extremely quiet and seemed to be 
 borne down with the sense of the terrible 
 things which he saw. He never lost the 
 good-fellowship which was inherent in him, 
 
 [i7l 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 and was always ready to do anything to 
 oblige one, but he formed the habit of sit- 
 ting alone and silent, for hours at a time, 
 just thinking. It seemed as if he had a pre- 
 monition about himself, though he never 
 showed fear and never spoke of the dangers 
 we were going into, as the other fellows did. 
 He was killed in the Somme action in which 
 I was wounded. 
 
 I'm not much on metaphysics and it is 
 difficult for me to express the thought I 
 would convey here. I can just say, as I 
 would if I were talking to a pal, that I have 
 often wondered what the intangible mental 
 or moral quality is that makes men think 
 and act so differently to one another when 
 confronted by the imminent prospect of sud- 
 den death. Is it a question of will power — 
 of imagination, or the lack of it — of some- 
 thing that you can call merely physical cour- 
 age — or what? Take the case of Macfar- 
 lane : In action he was as brave as they make 
 them, but, as I have said before, the prospect 
 of sudden death and the presence of death 
 and suffering around him changed him ut- 
 
 [18] 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 terly. From a cheerful, happy lad he was 
 transformed into an old man, silent, gloomy 
 and absent-minded except for momentary 
 flashes of his old spirit which became less 
 and less frequent as the time for his own end 
 drew nearer. 
 
 There was another chap with us from a 
 little town in Northern Ontario. While in 
 Canada and England he was utterly worth- 
 less ; always in trouble for being absent with- 
 out leave, drunk, late on parade, or some- 
 thing else. I think he must, at one time or an- 
 other, have been charged with every offense 
 possible under the K. R.&O. (King's Regu- 
 lations and Orders). On route marches he 
 was constantly "falling out." I told him, 
 one day when I was in command of a pla- 
 toon, that he ought to join the Royal Flying 
 Corps. Then he would only have to fall out 
 once. He said that he considered this a very 
 good joke and asked me if I could think of 
 anything funny in connection with being ab- 
 sent without leave — which he was, that 
 night. In France, this chap was worth ten 
 ordinary men. He was always cheerful, al- 
 
 [19] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 ways willing and prompt in obeying orders, 
 ready to tackle unhesitatingly the most un- 
 pleasant or the most risky duty, and the hot- 
 ter it was the better he liked it. He came 
 out laughing and unscathed from a dozen 
 tight places where it didn't seem possible 
 for him to escape. To use a much-worn 
 phrase, he seemed to bear a charmed life. 
 I'll wager my last cent that he never gets an 
 "R. I. P." — which they put on the cross 
 above a soldier's grave, and which the Tom- 
 mies call "Rise If Possible." Then there 
 was a certain sergeant who was the best in- 
 structor in physical training and bayonet 
 fighting in our brigade and who was as fine 
 and dashing a soldier in physique and car- 
 riage as you ever could see. When he got 
 under fire he simply went to pieces. On our 
 first bombing raid he turned and ran back 
 into our own barbed wire, and when he was 
 caught there acted like a madman. He was 
 given another chance but flunked worse than 
 ever. I don't think he was a plain 
 coward. There was merely something 
 wrong with his nervous system. He just 
 
 f20l 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 didn't have the "viscera." Now he 
 is back of the lines, instructing, and will 
 never be sent to the trenches again. We had 
 an officer, also, who was a man of the great- 
 est courage, so far as sticking where he be- 
 longed and keeping his men going ahead 
 might be concerned, but every time he heard 
 a big shell coming over he was seized with 
 a violent fit of vomiting. I don't know what 
 makes men brave or cowardly in action, and 
 I wouldn't undertake to say which quality 
 a man might show until I saw him in action, 
 but I do know this : If a man isn't frightened 
 when he goes under fire, it's because he lacks 
 intelligence. He simply must be frightened 
 if he has the ordinary human attributes. 
 But if he has what we call physical courage 
 he goes on with the rest of them. Then if 
 he has extraordinary courage he may go on 
 where the rest of them won't go. I should 
 say that the greatest fear the ordinary man 
 has in going into action is the fear that he 
 will show that he is afraid — not to his offi- 
 cers, or to the Germans, or to the folks back 
 home, but to his mates; to the men with 
 
 [21] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 whom he has laughed and scoffed at danger. 
 
 It's the elbow-to-elbow influence that car- 
 ries men up to face machine guns and gas. 
 A heroic battalion may be made up of units 
 of potential cowards. 
 
 At the time when Macfarlane was given 
 his stripes, I also was made a sergeant on 
 account of the fact that I had been at school 
 in the Virginia Military Institute. That is, 
 I was an acting sergeant. It was explained 
 to me that my appointment would have to 
 be confirmed in England, and then recon- 
 firmed after three months' service in France. 
 Under the regulations of the Canadian 
 forces, a non-commissioned officer, after 
 final confirmation in his grade, can be re- 
 duced to the ranks only by a general court- 
 martial, though he can escape a court-mar- 
 tial, when confronted with charges, by re- 
 verting to the ranks at his own request. 
 
 Forty- two hundred of us sailed for Eng- 
 land on the Empress of Britain, sister ship 
 to the Empress of Ireland, which was sunk 
 in the St. Lawrence River. The steamer 
 was, of course, very crowded and uncom- 
 
 [22] 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 fortable, and the eight-day trip across was 
 most unpleasant. We had tripe to eat until 
 we were sick of the sight of it. A sergeant 
 reported one morning, "eight men and 
 twenty-two breakfasts, absent." There were 
 two other troop ships in our convoy, the 
 Baltic and the Metagama. A British cruiser 
 escorted us until we were four hundred 
 miles off the coast of Ireland ; then each ship 
 picked up a destroyer which had come out 
 to meet her. At that time, a notice was 
 posted in the purser's office informing us 
 that we were in the war zone, and that 
 the ship would not stop for anything, 
 even for a man overboard. That day a sol- 
 dier fell off the Metagama with seven hun- 
 dred dollars in his pocket, and the ship never 
 even hesitated. They left him where he had 
 no chance in the world to spend his money. 
 
 Through my training in the V. M. I., I 
 was able to read semaphore signals, and I 
 caught the message from the destroyer 
 which escorted us. It read : 
 
 "Each ship for herself now. Make a 
 break I" 
 
 [*3l 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 We beat the other steamers of our convoy 
 eight hours in getting to the dock in Liver- 
 pool, and, according to what seemed to be 
 the regular system of our operations at that 
 time, we were the last to disembark. 
 
 The majority of our fellows had never 
 been in England before, and they looked on 
 our travels at that time as a fine lark. Every- 
 body cheered and laughed when they dusted 
 off one of those little toy trains and brought 
 it up to take us away in it. After we were 
 aboard of it, we proceeded at the dizzy rate 
 of about four miles an hour, and our regu- 
 lar company humorist — no company is com- 
 plete without one — suggested that they were 
 afraid, if they went any faster, they might 
 run off of the island before they could stop. 
 We were taken to Bramshott camp, in 
 Hampshire, twelve miles from the Alder- 
 shott School of Command. The next day 
 we were given "King's leave" — eight days 
 with free transportation anywhere in the 
 British Isles. It is the invariable custom 
 to give this sort of leave to all colonial troops 
 immediately upon their arrival in England. 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 However, in our case, Ireland was barred. 
 Just at that time, Ireland was no place for 
 a newly arrived Canadian looking for sport. 
 
 Our men followed the ordinary rule of 
 soldiers on leave. About seventy-five per 
 cent, of them wired in for extensions and 
 more money. About seventy-four per cent, 
 received peremptorily unfavorable replies. 
 The excuses and explanations which came 
 in kept our officers interested and amused 
 for some days. One man — who got leave — 
 sent in a telegram which is now framed and 
 hung on the wall of a certain battalion or- 
 derley's room. He telegraphed: 
 
 "No one dead. No one ill. Got plenty 
 of money. Just having a good time. Please 
 grant extension." 
 
 After our leave, they really began to make 
 soldiers of us. We thought our training in 
 Canada had amounted to something. We 
 found out that we might as well have been 
 playing croquet. We learned more the first 
 week of our actual training in England than 
 we did from November to April in Canada. 
 I make this statement without fear that any 
 
 [25] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 officer or man of the Canadian forces alive 
 to-day will disagree with me, and I submit 
 it for the thoughtful consideration of the 
 gentlemen who believe that our own armies 
 can be prepared for service here at home. 
 
 The sort of thing that the President is up 
 against at Washington is fairly exemplified 
 in what the press despatches mention as "ob- 
 jections on technical grounds" of the 
 "younger officers of the war college," to the 
 recommendations w r hich General Pershing 
 has made as to the reorganization of the 
 units of our army for service in Europe. 
 
 The extent of the reorganization which 
 must be made in pursuance of General 
 Pershing's recommendations is not apparent 
 to most people. Even our best informed 
 militia officers do not know how funda- 
 mentally different the organization of Euro- 
 pean armies is to that which has existed in 
 our own army since the days when it was 
 established to suit conditions of the Civil 
 War. But the officers of our regular army 
 realize what the reorganization would 
 mean and some of them rise to oppose it for 
 
 [26] 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 fear it may jeopardize their seniority or 
 promotion or importance. But they'll have 
 to come to it. The Unites States army can 
 not operate successfully in France unless its 
 units are convenient and similar multiples 
 to those in the French and British armies. 
 It would lead to endless confusion and diffi- 
 culty if we kept the regiment as our field 
 unit while our allies have the battalion as 
 their field unit. 
 
 There are but unimportant differences in 
 the unit organization of the French, British 
 and Canadian forces. The British plan of 
 organization is an examplar of all, and it is 
 what we must have in our army. There is 
 no such thing in the British army as an 
 established regimental strength. A battal- 
 ion numbers 1,500 men, but there is no limit 
 to the number of battalions which a regi- 
 ment may have. The battalion is the field 
 unit. There are regiments in the British 
 army which have seven battalions in the 
 field. Each battalion is commanded by a 
 lieutenant-colonel. All full colonels either 
 do staff duty or act as brigaders. There 
 
 [27] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 are five companies of 250 men each in every 
 battalion. That is, there are four regular 
 companies of 250 men each, and a head- 
 quarters company of approximately that 
 strength. Each company is commanded by 
 a major, with a captain as second in com- 
 mand, and four lieutenants as platoon com- 
 manders. There are no second lieuten- 
 ants in the Canadian forces, though 
 there are in the British and French. The 
 senior major of the battalion commands 
 the headquarters company, which in- 
 cludes the transport, quartermaster's staff, 
 paymaster's department (a paymaster and 
 four clerks), and the headquarters staff (a 
 captain adjutant and his non-commissioned 
 staff). Each battalion has, in addition to 
 its full company strength, the following 
 "sections" of from 30 to 75 men each, and 
 each commanded by a lieutenant: bombers, 
 scouts and snipers, machine gunners and sig- 
 nallers. There is also a section of stretcher- 
 bearers, under the direct command of the 
 battalion surgeon, who ranks as a major. 
 In the United States army a battalion is corn- 
 el 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 manded by a major. It consists merely of 
 four companies of 1 12 men each, with a cap- 
 tain and two lieutenants to each company. 
 
 As I have said, a British or French bat- 
 talion has four ordinary companies of 250 
 men each and the headquarters company 
 of special forces approximating that num- 
 ber of men. Instead of one major it has six, 
 including the surgeon. It has seven cap- 
 tains, including the paymaster, the adjutant 
 and the quartermaster. It has twenty lieu- 
 tenants, including the commanders of spe- 
 cial "sections." You can imagine what con- 
 fusion would be likely to occur in substitut- 
 ing a United States force for a French or 
 English force, with these differences of 
 organization existing. 
 
 In this war, every man has got to be a 
 specialist. He's got to know one thing bet- 
 ter than anybody else except those who have 
 had intensive instruction in the same branch. 
 And besides that, he's got to have effective 
 general knowledge of all the specialties in 
 which his fellow soldiers have been particu- 
 larly trained. I can illustrate this. Imme- 
 
 [29] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 diately upon our return from first leave in 
 England, we were divided into sections for 
 training in eight specialties. They were: 
 Bombing, sniping, scouting, machine-gun 
 fighting, signalling, trench mortar opera- 
 tion, bayonet fighting, and stretcher-bear- 
 ing. I was selected for special training in 
 bombing, probably because I was supposed, 
 as an American and a baseball player, to be 
 expert in throwing. With the other men 
 picked for training in the same specialty, I 
 was sent to Aldershott, and there, for three 
 weeks, twelve hours a day, I threw bombs, 
 studied bombs, read about bombs, took 
 bombs to pieces and put them together 
 again, and did practically everything else 
 that you would do with a bomb, except 
 eat it. 
 
 Then I was ordered back along with the 
 other men who had gained this intimate 
 acquaintance with the bomb family, and 
 we were put to work teaching the entire 
 battalion all that we had learned. When 
 we were not teaching, we were under in- 
 struction ourselves by the men who had 
 
 [30] 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 taken special training in other branches. 
 Also, at certain periods of the day, we had 
 physical training and rifle practice. Up to 
 the time of our arrival in England, inten- 
 sive training had been merely a fine phrase 
 with us. During our stay there, it was a 
 definite and overpowering fact. Day and 
 night we trained and day and night it rained. 
 At nine o'clock, we would fall into our 
 bunks in huts which held from a half to a 
 whole platoon — from thirty to sixty men — 
 and drop into exhausted sleep, only to turn 
 out at 5 A.M. to give a sudden imitation 
 of what we would do to the Germans if 
 they sneaked up on us before breakfast in 
 six inches of mud. Toward the last, when 
 we thought we had been driven to the limit, 
 they told us that we were to have a period 
 of real, intensive training to harden us for 
 actual fighting. They sent us four imperial 
 drill sergeants from the British Grenadier 
 Guards, the senior foot regiment of the 
 British army, and the one with which we 
 were affiliated. 
 
 It would be quite unavailing for me to 
 
 [31] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 attempt to describe these drill sergeants. 
 The British drill sergeant is an institution 
 which can be understood only through per- 
 sonal and close contact. If he thinks a 
 major-general is wrong, he'll tell him so on 
 the spot in the most emphatic way, but with- 
 out ever violating a single sacred tradition 
 of the service. The sergeants, who took us 
 in charge to put the real polish on our 
 training, had all seen from twenty to twenty- 
 five years of service. They had all been 
 through the battles of Mons and the Marne, 
 and they had all been wounded. They were 
 perfect examples of a type. One of them 
 ordered all of our commissioned officers, 
 from the colonel down, to turn out for rifle 
 drill one day, and put them through the 
 manual of arms while the soldiers of the 
 battalion stood around, looking on. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said he, in the midst of 
 the drill, "when I see you handle your 
 rifles I feel like falling on my knees 
 and thanking God that we've got a 
 navy." 
 
 On June 2d, after the third battle of 
 
 [32] 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 Ypres, while Macfarlane and I were sitting 
 wearily on our bunks during an odd hour 
 in the afternoon when nobody had thought 
 of anything for us to do, a soldier came in 
 with a message from headquarters which 
 put a sudden stop to the discussion we were 
 having about the possibility of getting leave 
 to go up to London. The message was that 
 the First, Second and Third divisions of the 
 Canadians had lost forty per cent, of their 
 men in the third fight at Ypres and that 
 three hundred volunteers were wanted from 
 each of our battalions to fill up the gaps. 
 
 "Forty per cent.," said Macfarlane, get- 
 ting up quickly. "My God, think of it! 
 Well, I'm off to tell 'em I'll go." 
 
 I told him I was with him, and we started 
 for headquarters, expecting to be received 
 with applause and pointed out as heroic ex- 
 amples. We couldn't even get up to give in 
 our names. The whole battalion had gone 
 ahead of us. They heard about it first. That 
 was the spirit of the Canadians. It was 
 about this time that a story went 'round con- 
 cerning an English colonel who had been 
 
 [33] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 called upon to furnish volunteers from his 
 outfit to replace casualties. He backed his 
 regiment up against a barrack wall and said : 
 
 "Now, all who don't want to volunteer, 
 step three paces to the rear. M 
 
 In our battalion, sergeants and even offi- 
 cers offered to go as privates. Our volun- 
 teers went at once, and we were re-enforced 
 up to strength by drafts from the Fifth 
 Canadian division, which was then forming 
 in England. 
 
 In July, when we were being kept on the 
 rifle ranges most of the time, all leave was 
 stopped, and we were ordered to hold our- 
 selves in readiness to go overseas. In the 
 latter part of the month, we started. We 
 sailed from Southampton to Havre on a big 
 transport, escorted all the way by destroyers. 
 As we landed, we got our first sight of the 
 harvest of war. A big hospital on the quay 
 was filled with wounded men. We had 
 twenty-four hours in what they called a 
 "rest camp." We slept on cobble stones in 
 shacks which were so utterly comfortless 
 that it would be an insult to a Kentucky 
 
 [34] 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 thoroughbred to call them stables. Then we 
 were on the way to the Belgian town of 
 Poperinghe, which is one hundred and fifty 
 miles from Havre and was, at that time, the 
 rail head of the Ypres salient. We made the 
 trip in box cars which were marked in 
 French: "Eight horses or forty men," and 
 we had to draw straws to decide who should 
 lie down. 
 
 We got into Poperinghe at 7 A. M., 
 and the scouts had led us into the front 
 trenches at two the next morning Our posi- 
 tion was to the left of St. Eloi and was known 
 as "The Island," because it had no support 
 on either side On the left, were the Yser 
 Canal and the bluff which forms its bank. 
 On the right were three hundred yards of 
 battered-down trenches which had been re- 
 built twice and blown in again each time by 
 the German guns. For some reason, which 
 I never quite understood, the Germans 
 were able to drop what seemed a tolerably 
 large proportion of the output of the Krupp 
 works on this particular spot whenever they 
 wanted to. Our high command had con- 
 
 [35] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 eluded that it was untenable, and so we, on 
 one side of it, and the British on the other, 
 had to just keep it scouted and protect our 
 separate flanks. Another name they had 
 for that position was the "Bird Cage." That 
 was because the first fellows who moved into 
 it made themselves nice and comfy and put 
 up wire nettings to prevent any one from 
 tossing bombs in on them. Thus, when the 
 Germans stirred up the spot with an accu- 
 rate shower of "whiz-bangs" and "coal- 
 boxes," the same being thirteen-pounders 
 and six-inch shells, that wire netting pre- 
 sented a spectacle of utter inadequacy which 
 hasn't been equalled in this war. 
 
 They called the position w T hich we were 
 assigned to defend "The Graveyard of Can- 
 ada." That was because of the fearful 
 losses of the Canadians here in the second 
 battle of Ypres, from April 21, to June 1, 
 1915, when the first gas attack in the world's 
 history was launched by the Germans, and, 
 although the French, on the left, and the 
 British, on the right, fell back, the Cana- 
 dians stayed where they were put. 
 
 [36] 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 Right here I can mention something 
 which will give you an idea why descrip- 
 tions of this war don't describe it. During 
 the first gas attack, the Canadians, choking to 
 death and falling over each other in a fight 
 against a new and unheard-of terror in war- 
 fare, found a way — the Lord only knows 
 who first discovered it and how he happened 
 to do it — to stay through a gas cloud and 
 come out alive. It isn't pretty to think of, 
 and it's like many other things in this war 
 which you can't even tell of in print, be- 
 cause simple description would violate the 
 nice ethics about reading matter for the pub- 
 lic eye, which have grown up in long years 
 of peace and traditional decency. But this 
 thing which you can't describe meant just 
 the difference between life and death to 
 many of the Canadians, that first day of the 
 gas. Official orders: now, tell every soldier 
 what he is to do with his handkerchief or a 
 piece of his shirt if he is caught in a gas at- 
 tack without his mask. 
 
 The nearest I can come, in print, to tell- 
 ing you what a soldier is ordered to do in 
 
 137) 
 
BEST Ll/CK 
 
 this emergency is to remind you that am- 
 monia tunics oppose chlorine gas as a neu- 
 tralizing agent, and that certain emanations 
 of the body throw off ammonia fumes. 
 
 Now, that Tve told you how we got from 
 the Knickerbocker bar and other places to a 
 situation which was just one hundred and 
 titty yards from the entrenched front of the 
 German army in Belgium, L might as well 
 add a couple oi details about things which 
 straightway put the fear of God in our 
 hearts. At daybreak, one of our Fourteenth 
 platoon men, standing on the firing step, 
 pushed back his trench helmet and remarked 
 that he thought it was about time for coffee. 
 He didn't get any. A German sharpshooter, 
 firing the tirst time that day, got him under 
 the rim of his helmet, and his career with 
 the Canadian forces was over right there. 
 And then, as the dawn broke, we made out 
 a big painted sign raised above the German 
 front trench. It read : 
 
 WELCOME, 
 
 EIGHTY-SEVENTH CANADIANS 
 [38] 
 
TRAINING FOR THE WAR 
 
 We were a new battalion, we had been less 
 than seventy-two hours on the continent of 
 Europe and the Germans were not supposed 
 to know anything that was going on behind 
 our lines! 
 
 We learned, afterward, that concealed 
 telephones in the houses of the Belgian bur- 
 gomasters of the villages of Dinkiebusch 
 and Renninghelst, near our position, gave 
 communication with the German headquar- 
 ters opposite us. One of the duties of a de- 
 tail of our men, soon after that, was to stand 
 these two burgomasters up against a wall 
 and shoot them. 
 
 [39] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 [41] 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 When we took our position in the front 
 line trenches in Belgium, we relieved the 
 Twenty-sixth Canadian Battalion. The 
 Twenty-sixth belonged to the Second divi- 
 sion, and had seen real service during the 
 battle of Hooge and in what is now termed 
 the third battle of Ypres, which occurred in 
 June, 1916. The organization was made up 
 almost exclusively of French Canadians 
 from Quebec, and it was as fine a fighting 
 force as we had shown the Fritzes, despite 
 the fact that men of their race, as develop- 
 ments have proved, are not strongly loyal 
 to Canada and Britain. Individually, the 
 men of this French Canadian battalion were 
 splendid soldiers and the organization could 
 be criticized on one score only. In the heat 
 of action it could not be kept in control. On 
 
 [43] 
 
BEST LUCK 
 
 one occasion when it wont Ml, in broad day- 
 light, to relieve another battalion, the men 
 didn't stop at the tire trench. They went 
 right on "over the top," without orders, and, 
 as a result, were badly cut up. Time and 
 again the men of this battalion crossed "No 
 Man's Land" at night, without orders and 
 without even asking consent, just to have a 
 Scrimmage with "the beloved enemy." 
 Once, when ordered to take two lines of 
 
 trenches, they did so in the most soldierly 
 
 fashion, but, seeing red, kept on going as 
 
 it their orders were to continue to Berlin. 
 On this occasion they charged right into 
 their barrage tire and lost scores of their 
 men. struck down by British shells. It has 
 been said often oi all the Canadians that 
 they go the limit, without hesitation. There 
 was a time when the "Bing Boys" — the 
 Canadians were so called because this title 
 oi a London musical comedy was suggested 
 by the tact that their commander was Gen- 
 eral Byng — were ordered to take no prison- 
 ers, this order being issued after two of their 
 men were found crucified. A Canadian pri- 
 
 [44] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 vatc, having penetrated a German trench 
 with an attacking party, encountered a Ger- 
 man who threw up his hands and said: 
 "Mercy, Kamcrade. I have a wife and five 
 children at home. 
 
 "You're mistaken," replied the Canadian. 
 "You have a widow and five orphans at 
 home." 
 
 And, very shortly, he had. 
 
 Scouts from the Twenty-sixth battalion 
 had come back to the villages of Dinkei- 
 busch and Renninghelst to tell us how glad 
 they were to see us and to show us the way 
 in. As we proceeded overland, before 
 reaching the communication trenches at the 
 front, these scouts paid us the hospitable at- 
 tentions due strangers. That is, one of them 
 leading a platoon would say: 
 
 "Next two hundred yards in machine gun 
 range. Keep quiet, don't run, and be ready 
 to drop quick if you are warned." 
 
 There was one scout to each platoon, and 
 we followed him, single file, most of the 
 time along roads or well-worn paths, but 
 sometimes through thickets and ragged 
 
 [45] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 fields. Every now and then the scout would 
 yell at us to drop, and down we'd go on our 
 stomachs while, away off in the distance we 
 could hear the "put-put" of machine guns — 
 the first sound of hostile firing that had ever 
 reached our ears. 
 
 "It's all right," said the scout. "They 
 haven't seen us or got track of us. They're 
 just firing on suspicion." 
 
 Nevertheless, when our various platoons 
 had all got into the front reserve trenches, at 
 about two hours after midnight, we learned 
 that the first blood of our battalion had been 
 spilled. Two men had been wounded, 
 though neither fatally. Our own stretcher- 
 bearers took our wounded back to the field 
 hospital at Dinkiebusch. The men of the 
 Twenty-sixth battalion spent the rest of the 
 night instructing us and then left us to hold 
 the position. We were as nervous as a lot 
 of cats, and it seemed to me that the Ger- 
 mans must certainly know that they could 
 come over and walk right through us, but, 
 outside of a few casualities from sniping, 
 such as the one that befell the Fourteenth 
 
 [46] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 platoon man, which I have told about, noth- 
 ing very alarming happened the first day 
 and night, and by that time we had got 
 steady on our job. We held the position for 
 twenty-six days, which was the longest period 
 that any Canadian or British organization 
 had ever remained in a front-line trench. 
 
 In none of the stories I've read, have I 
 ever seen trench fighting, as it was then car- 
 ried on in Belgium, adequately described. 
 You see, you can't get much of an idea about 
 a thing like that, making a quick tour of the 
 trenches under official direction and escort, 
 as the newspaper and magazine writers do. 
 I couldn't undertake to tell anything worth 
 while about the big issues of the war, but I 
 can describe how soldiers have to learn to 
 fight in the trenches — and I think a good 
 many of our young fellows have that to 
 learn, now. "Over there," they don't talk of 
 peace or even of to-morrow. They just sit 
 back and take it. 
 
 We always held the fire trench as lightly 
 as possible, because it is a demonstrated fact 
 that the front ditch cannot be successfully 
 
 [47] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 defended in a determined attack. The thing 
 
 to do is to be ready to jump onto the enemy 
 as soon as he has got into your front trench 
 and is fighting on ground that you know and 
 he doesn't and knock so many kinds of tar 
 out of him that he'll have to pull his freight 
 for a spot that isn't so warm. That system 
 worked first rate for us. 
 
 During the day, we had only a very few 
 men in the fire trench. If an attack is com- 
 ing in daylight, there's always plenty of 
 time to get ready for it. At night, we kept 
 prepared for trouble all the time. We had 
 a night sentry on each firing step and a man 
 sitting at his feet to watch him and know if 
 he was secretly sniped. Then we had a sen- 
 try in each "bay" of the trench to take mes- 
 sages. 
 
 Orders didn't permit the man on the firing 
 step or the man watching him to leave post 
 on any excuse whatever, during their two- 
 hour "spell" of duty. Hanging on a string, 
 at the elbow of each sentry on the fire-step 
 was a siren whistle or an empty shell case 
 and bit of iron with which to hammer on it. 
 
 L4S] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 This — siren or improvised gong — was for 
 the purpose of spreading the alarm in case 
 of a gas attack. Also we had sentries in "lis- 
 tening posts," at various points from twenty 
 to fifty yards out in "No Man's Land." 
 These men blackened their faces before they 
 went "over the top," and then lay in shell 
 holes or natural hollows. There were al- 
 ways two of them, a bayonet man and a 
 bomber. From the listening post a wire ran 
 back to the fire trench to be used in signal- 
 ing. In the trench, a man sat with this wire 
 wrapped around his hand. One pull meant 
 "All O. K.," two pulls, "I'm coming in," 
 three pulls, "Enemy in sight," and four 
 pulls, "Sound gas alarm." The fire step in 
 a trench is a shelf on which soldiers stand 
 so that they may aim their rifles between the 
 sand bags which form the parapet. 
 
 In addition to these men, we had patrols 
 and scouts out in "No Man's Land" the 
 greater part of the night, with orders to gain 
 any information possible which might be of 
 value to battalion, brigade, division or gen- 
 eral headquarters. They reported on the 
 
 [49] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 conditions of the Germans' barbed wire, the 
 location of machine guns and other little 
 things like that which might be of interest 
 to some commanding officer, twenty miles 
 back. Also, they were ordered to make 
 every effort to capture any of the enemy's 
 scouts or patrols, so that we could get infor- 
 mation from them. One of the interesting 
 moments in this work came when a star shell 
 caught you out in an open spot. If you 
 moved you were gone. I've seen men stand 
 on one foot for the thirty seconds during 
 which a star shell will burn. Then, when 
 scouts or patrols met in u No Man's Land" 
 they always had to fight it out with bayonets. 
 One single shot would be the signal for ar- 
 tillery fire and would mean the almost in- 
 stant annihilation of the men on both sides 
 of the fight. Under the necessities of this 
 war, many of our men have been killed 
 by our own shell fire. 
 
 At a little before daybreak came "stand- 
 to," when everybody got buttoned up and 
 ready for business, because, at that hour, 
 most attacks begin and also that was one of 
 
 [50] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 the two regular times for a dose of "morning 
 and evening hate," otherwise a good lively 
 fifteen minutes of shell fire. We had some 
 casualities every morning and evening, and 
 the stretcher-bearers used to get ready for 
 them as a matter of course. For fifteen 
 minutes at dawn and dusk, the Germans 
 used to send over "whiz-bangs," "coal- 
 boxes" and "minniewurfers" (shells from 
 trench mortars) in such a generous way that 
 it looked as if they liked to shoot 'em off, 
 whether they hit anything or not. You 
 could always hear the "heavy stuff" coming, 
 and we paid little attention to it as it was 
 used in efforts to reach the batteries, back of 
 our lines. The poor old town of Dinkie- 
 busch got the full benefit of it. When a 
 shell would shriek its way over, some one 
 would say : "There goes the express for Din- 
 kiebusch," and a couple of seconds later, 
 when some prominent landmark of Dinkie- 
 busch would disintegrate to the accompani- 
 ment of a loud detonation, some one else 
 would remark: 
 "Train's arrived!" 
 
 [51] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 The scouts who inhabited "No Man's 
 Land" by night became snipers by day. 
 Different units had different systems of util- 
 izing these specialists. The British and 
 the French usually left their scouts and snip- 
 ers in one locality so that they might come 
 to know every hummock and hollow and 
 tree-stump of the limited landscape which 
 absorbed their unending attention The 
 Canadians, up to the time when I left 
 France, invariably took their scouts and 
 snipers along when they moved from one 
 section of the line to another. This system 
 was criticized as having the disadvantage of 
 compelling the men to learn new territory 
 while opposing enemy scouts familiar 
 with every inch of the ground. As to the 
 contention on this point, I could not under- 
 take to decide, but it seemed to me that our 
 system had, at least, the advantage of keep- 
 ing the men more alert and less likely to 
 grow careless. Some of our snipers ac- 
 quired reputations for a high degree of skill 
 and there was always a fascination for me 
 in watching them work. We always had 
 
 [52] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 two snipers to each trench section. They 
 would stand almost motionless on the fire 
 steps for hours at a time, searching every 
 inch of the German front trench and the sur- 
 rounding territory with telescopes. They 
 always swathed their heads with sand bags, 
 looking like huge, grotesque turbans, as this 
 made the finest kind of an "assimilation cov- 
 ering." It would take a most alert German 
 to pick out a man's head, so covered, among 
 all the tens of thousands of sand bags which 
 lined our parapet. The snipers always used 
 special rifles with telescopic sights, and they 
 made most extraordinary shots. Some of 
 them who had been huntsmen in the Cana- 
 dian big woods were marvellous marksmen. 
 Frequently one of them would continue for 
 several days giving special attention to a 
 spot where a German had shown the top of 
 his head for a moment. If the German ever 
 showed again, at that particular spot, he 
 was usually done for. A yell or some little 
 commotion in the German trenches, follow- 
 ing the sniper's quick shot would tell the 
 story to us. Then the sniper would receive 
 
 [53] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 general congratulations. There is a first 
 warning to every man going into the 
 trenches. It is: "Fear God and keep your 
 head down." 
 
 Our rations in the trenches were, on the 
 whole, excellent. There were no delicacies 
 and the food was not over plentiful, but it 
 was good. The system appeared to have the 
 purpose of keeping us like bulldogs before 
 a fight — with enough to live on but hungry 
 all the time. Our food consisted princi- 
 pally of bacon, beans, beef, bully-beef, hard 
 tack, jam and tea. Occasionally we had a 
 few potatoes, and, when we were taken back 
 for a few days' rest, we got a good many 
 things which difficulty of transport excluded 
 from the front trenches. It was possible, 
 sometimes, to beg, borrow or even steal eggs 
 and fresh bread and coffee. 
 
 All of our provisions came up to the front 
 line in sand bags, a fact easily recognizable 
 when you tasted them. There is supposed 
 to be an intention to segregate the various 
 foods, in transport, but it must be admitted 
 that they taste more or less of each other, 
 
 [54] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 and that the characteristic sand-bag flavor 
 distinguishes all of them from mere, ordi- 
 nary foods which have not made a venture- 
 some journey. As many of the sand bags 
 have been originally used for containing 
 brown sugar, the flavor is more easily recog- 
 nized than actually unpleasant. When we 
 got down to the Somme, the food supply was 
 much less satisfactory — principally because 
 of transport difficulties. At times, even in 
 the rear, we could get fresh meat only twice 
 a week, and were compelled to live the rest 
 of the time on bully-beef stew, which resem- 
 bles terrapin to the extent that it is a liquid 
 with mysterious lumps in it. In the front 
 trenches, on the Somme, all we had were the 
 "iron rations" which we were able to carry 
 in with us. These consisted of bully-beef, 
 hard tack, jam and tea. The supply of these 
 foods which each man carries is termed 
 "emergency rations," and the ordinary rule 
 is that the emergency ration must not be 
 touched until the man has been forty-eight 
 hours without food, and then only by per- 
 mission of an officer. 
 
 [55] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 One of the great discoveries of this war 
 is that hard tack makes an excellent fuel, 
 burning like coke and giving off no smoke. 
 We usually saved enough hard tack to form 
 a modest escort, stomachward, for our jam, 
 and used the rest to boil our tea. Until one 
 has been in the trenches he cannot realize 
 what a useful article of diet jam is. It is 
 undoubtedly nutritious and one doesn't tire 
 of it, even though there seem to be but two 
 varieties now existing in any considerable 
 quantities — plum and apple. Once upon a 
 time a hero of the "ditches" discovered that 
 his tin contained strawberry jam, but there 
 was such a rush when he announced it that 
 he didn't get any of it. 
 
 There was, of course, a very good reason 
 for the shortness and uncertainty of the food 
 supply on the Somme. All communication 
 with the front line was practically overland, 
 the communication trenches having been 
 blown in. Ration parties, bringing in food, 
 frequently suffered heavy casualties. Yet 
 they kept tenaciously and courageously do- 
 ing their best for us. Occasionally they even 
 
 [56] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 brought up hot soup in huge, improvised 
 thermos bottles made from petrol tins 
 wrapped in straw and sand bags, but this was 
 very rarely attempted, and not with much 
 success. You could sum up the food situa- 
 tion briefly. It was good — when you got it. 
 It may be fitting, at this time, to pay a 
 tribute to the soldier's most invaluable 
 friend, the sand bag. The sand bag, like the 
 rest of us, did not start life in a military 
 capacity, but since joining the army it has 
 fulfilled its duty nobly. Primarily, sand 
 bags are used in making a parapet for a 
 trench or a roof for a dug-out, but there are 
 a hundred other uses to which they have 
 been adapted, without hesitation and possi- 
 bly without sufficient gratitude for their 
 ready adaptability. Some of these uses may 
 surprise you. Soldiers strain their tea 
 through them, wrap them around their legs 
 for protection against cold and mud, swab 
 their rifles with them to keep them clean, 
 use them for bed sacks, kit bags and ration 
 bags. The first thing a man does when he 
 enters a trench or reaches a new position 
 
 [57] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 which is to be held is to feel in his belt, if 
 he is a private, or to yell for some one else 
 to feel in his belt, if he is an officer, for a 
 sand bag. Each soldier is supposed to have 
 five tucked beneath his belt whenever he 
 starts to do anything out of the ordinary. 
 When youVe got hold of the first one, in a 
 new position, under fire, you commence fill- 
 ing it as fast as the Germans and your own 
 ineptitude will permit, and the sooner that 
 bag is filled and placed, the more likely you 
 are to continue in a state of health and good 
 spirits. Sand bags are never filled with 
 sand, because there is never any sand to put 
 into them. Anything that you can put in 
 with a shovel will do. 
 
 About the only amusement we had during 
 our long stay in the front trenches in Bel- 
 gium, was to sit with our backs against the 
 rear wall and shoot at the rats running along 
 the parapet. Poor Macfarlane, with a flash 
 of the old humor which he had before the 
 war, told a "rookie" that the trench rats 
 were so big that he saw one of them trying 
 on his great-coat. They used to run over 
 
 [58] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 our faces when we were sleeping in our dug- 
 outs, and I've seen them in ravenous swarms, 
 burrowing into the shallow graves of the 
 dead. Many soldiers' legs are scarred to the 
 knees with bites. 
 
 The one thing of which we constantly 
 lived in fear was a gas attack. I used to 
 awaken in the middle of the night, in a cold 
 sweat, dreaming that I heard the clatter and 
 whistle-blowing all along the line which 
 meant that the gas was coming. And, 
 finally, I really did hear the terrifying 
 sound, just at a moment when it couldn't 
 have sounded worse. I was in charge of the 
 nightly ration detail, sent back about ten 
 miles to the point of nearest approach of the 
 transport lorries, to carry in rations, ammu- 
 nition and sand bags to the front trenches. 
 We had a lot of trouble, returning with our 
 loads. Passing a point which was' called 
 "Shrapnel Corner" because the Germans 
 had precise range on it, we were caught 
 in machine-gun fire and had to lie on our 
 stomachs for twenty minutes, during which 
 we lost one man, wounded. I sent him back 
 
 [59] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 and went on with my party only to run into 
 another machine-gun shower a half-mile 
 further on. While we were lying down to 
 escape this, a concealed British battery of 
 five-inch guns, about which we knew noth- 
 ing, opened up right over our heads. It 
 shook us up and scared us so that some of 
 our party were now worse off than the man 
 who had been hit and carried to the rear. 
 We finally got together and went on. When 
 we were about a mile behind the reserve 
 trench, stumbling in the dark through the 
 last and most dangerous path overland, we 
 heard a lone siren whistle followed by a 
 wave of metallic hammering and wild toot- 
 ing which seemed to spread over all of Bel- 
 gium a mile ahead of us. All any of us 
 could say was: 
 
 "Gas!" 
 
 All you could see in the dark was a col- 
 lection of white and frightened faces. 
 Every trembling ringer seemed awkward as 
 a thumb as we got out our gas masks and 
 helmets and put them on, following direc- 
 tions as nearly as we could. I ordered the 
 
 [60] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 men to sit still and sent two forward to no- 
 tify me from headquarters when the gas 
 alarm was over. They lost their way and 
 were not found for two days. We sat there 
 for an hour, and then I ventured to take my 
 mask off. As nothing happened, I ordered 
 the men to do the same. When we got into 
 the trenches with our packs, we found that 
 the gas alarm had been one of Fritz's jokes. 
 The first sirens had been sounded in the Ger- 
 man lines, and there hadn't been any gas. 
 
 Our men evened things up with the Ger- 
 mans, however, the next night. Some of our 
 scouts crawled clear up to the German 
 barbed wire, ten yards in front of the enemy 
 fire trench, tied empty jam-tins to the barri- 
 cade and then, after attaching light tele- 
 phone wires to the barbed strands, crawled 
 back to our trenches. When they started 
 pulling the telephone wires the empty tins 
 made a clatter right under Fritz's nose. 
 Immediately the Germans opened up with 
 all their machine-gun and rifle fire, began 
 bombing the spot from which the noise came 
 and sent up "S. O. S." signals for artillery 
 
 [61] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 fire along a mile of their line. They fired 
 a ten-thousand-dollar salute and lost a 
 night's sleep over the noise made by the dis- 
 carded containers of five shillings' worth of 
 jam. It was a good tonic for the Tommies. 
 
 A few days after this, a very young offi- 
 cer passed me in a trench while I was sitting 
 on a fire-step, writing a letter. I noticed 
 that he had the red tabs of a staff officer on 
 his uniform, but I paid no more attention 
 to him than that. No compliments such as 
 salutes to officers are paid in the trenches. 
 After he had passed, one of the men asked 
 me if I didn't know who he was. I said I 
 didn't. 
 
 "Why you d d fool," he said, "that's 
 
 the Prince of Wales." 
 
 When the little prince came back, I stood 
 to salute him. He returned the salute with 
 a grave smile and passed on. He was quite 
 alone, and I was told afterward, that he 
 made these trips through the trenches just 
 to show the men that he did not consider 
 himself better than any other soldier. The 
 heir of England was certainly taking nearly 
 
 [62] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 the same chance of losing his inheritance 
 that we were. 
 
 After we had been on the front line fifteen 
 days, we received orders to make a bombing 
 raid. Sixty volunteers were asked for, and 
 the whole battalion offered. I was lucky — 
 or unlucky — enough to be among the sixty 
 who were chosen. I want to tell you in de- 
 tail about this bombing raid, so that you 
 can understand what a thing may really 
 amount to that gets only three lines, or per- 
 haps nothing at all, in the official dispatches. 
 And, besides that, it may help some of the 
 young men who read this, to know some- 
 thing, a little later, about bombing. 
 
 The sixty of us chosen to execute the raid 
 were taken twenty miles to the rear for a 
 week's instruction practice. Having only a 
 slight idea of what we were going to try to 
 do, we felt very jolly about the whole enter- 
 prise, starting off. We were camped in an 
 old barn, with several special instruction 
 officers in charge. We had oral instruction, 
 the first day, while sappers dug and built 
 an exact duplicate of the section of the Ger- 
 
 [63] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 man trenches which we were to raid. That 
 is, it was exact except for a few details. 
 Certain "skeleton trenches," in the practice 
 section, were dug simply to fool the German 
 aviators. If a photograph, taken back to 
 German headquarters, had shown an exact 
 duplicate of a German trench section, suspi- 
 cion might have been aroused and our plans 
 revealed. We were constantly warned about 
 the skeleton trenches and told to remember 
 that they did not exist in the German section 
 where we were to operate. Meanwhile, our 
 practice section was changed a little, several 
 times, because aerial photographs showed 
 that the Germans had been renovating and 
 making some additions to the trenches in 
 which wc were to have our frolic with them. 
 We had oral instruction, mostly, during 
 the day, because we didn't dare let the Ger- 
 man aviators see us practicing a bomb raid. 
 All night long, sometimes until two or three 
 o'clock in the morning, we rehearsed that 
 raid, just as carefully as a company of star 
 actors would rehearse a play. At first there 
 was a disposition to have sport out of it. 
 
 [64] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 "Well," some chap would say, rolling into 
 the hay all tired out, "I got killed six times 
 to-night. S'posc it'll be several times more 
 to-morrow night." 
 
 One man insisted that he had discovered, 
 in one of our aerial photographs, a German 
 burying money, and he carefully examined 
 each new picture so that he could be sure to 
 find the dough and dig it up. The 
 grave and serious manner of our officers, 
 however ; the exhaustive care with which we 
 were drilled and, more than all, the ap- 
 proach of the time when we were "to go 
 over the top," soon drove sport out of our 
 minds, and I can say for myself that the very 
 thought of the undertaking, as the fatal 
 night drew near, sent shivers up and down 
 my spine. 
 
 A bombing raid — something originated in 
 warfare by the Canadians — is not intended 
 for the purpose of holding ground, but to 
 gain information, to do as much damage as 
 possible, and to keep the enemy in a state of 
 nervousness. In this particular raid, the 
 chief object was to gain information. Our 
 
 [65] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 high command wanted to know what troops 
 were opposite us and what troops had been 
 there. We were expected to get this infor- 
 mation from prisoners and from buttons and 
 papers off of the Germans we might kill. 
 It was believed that troops were being re- 
 lieved from the big tent show, up at the 
 Somme, and sent to our side show in Bel- 
 gium for rest. Also, it was suspected that 
 artillery was being withdrawn for the 
 Somme. Especially, we were anxious to 
 bring back prisoners. 
 
 In civilized war, a prisoner can be com- 
 pelled to tell only his name, rank and relig- 
 ion. But this is not a civilized war, and 
 there are ways of making prisoners talk. 
 One of the most effective ways — quite hu- 
 mane — is to tie a prisoner fast, head and 
 foot, and then tickle his bare feet with a 
 feather. More severe measures have fre- 
 quently been used — the water cure, for in- 
 stance — but Tm bound to say that nearly all 
 the German prisoners I saw were quite lo- 
 quacious and willing to talk, and the accu- 
 racy of their information, when later con- 
 
 [66] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 firmed by raids, was surprising. The iron 
 discipline, which turns them into mere chil- 
 dren in the presence of their officers seemed 
 to make them subservient and obedient to 
 the officers who commanded us. In this 
 way, the system worked against the Father- 
 land. I mean, of course, in the cases of pri- 
 vates. Captured German officers, espe- 
 cially Prussians, were a nasty lot. We 
 never tried to get information from them 
 for we knew they would lie, happily and 
 intelligently. 
 
 At last came the night when we were to 
 go "over the top," across "No Man's Land," 
 and have a frolic with Fritz in his own, 
 bailiwick. I am endeavoring to be as ac- 
 curate and truthful as possible in these 
 stories of my soldiering, and I am therefore 
 compelled to say that there wasn't a man in 
 the sixty who didn't show the strain in his 
 pallor and nervousness. Under orders, we 
 discarded our trench helmets and substi- 
 tuted knitted skull caps or mess tin covers. 
 Then we blackened our hands and faces 
 with ashes from a camp fire. After 
 
 [67] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 this they loaded us into motor trucks and 
 took us up to "Shrapnel Corner," from 
 which point we went in on foot. Just before 
 we left, a staff officer came along and gave 
 us a little talk. 
 
 "This is the first time you men have been 
 tested/' he said. "You're Canadians. I 
 needn't say anything more to you. They're 
 going to be popping them off at a great rate 
 while you're on your way across. Remem- 
 ber that you'd better not stand up straight 
 because our shells will be going over just 
 six and a half feet from the ground — where 
 it's level. If you stand up straight you're 
 likely to be hit in the head, but don't let that 
 worry you because if you do get hit in the 
 head you won't know it. So why in hell 
 worry about it?" That was his farewell. 
 He jumped on his horse and rode off. 
 
 The point we were to attack had been se- 
 lected long before by our scouts. It was not, 
 as you might suppose, the weakest point in 
 the German line. It was on the contrary, 
 the strongest. It was considered that the 
 moral effect of cleaning up a weak point 
 
 [68] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 would be comparatively small, whereas to 
 break in at the strongest point would be 
 something really worth while. And, if we 
 were to take chances, it really wouldn't pay 
 to hesitate about degrees. The section we 
 were to raid had a frontage of one hundred 
 and fifty yards and a depth of two hundred 
 yards. It had been explained to us that we 
 were to be supported by a "box barrage," or 
 curtain fire from our artillery, to last exactly 
 twenty-six minutes. That is, for twenty-six 
 minutes from the time when we started 
 "over the top," our artillery, several miles 
 back, would drop a "curtain'' of shells all 
 around the edges of that one hundred and 
 fifty yard by two hundred yard section. We 
 were to have fifteen minutes in which to do 
 our work. Any man not out at the end of 
 the fifteen minutes would necessarily be 
 caught in our own fire as our artillery would 
 then change from a "box" to pour a straight 
 curtain fire, covering all of the spot of our 
 operations. 
 
 Our officers set their watches very care- 
 fully with those of the artillery officers, be- 
 
 [69] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 fore we went forward to the front trenches. 
 We reached the front at u P.M., and 
 not until our arrival there were we informed 
 of the "zero hour" — the time when the at- 
 tack was to be made. The hour of twelve- 
 ten had been selected. The waiting from 
 eleven o'clock until that time was simply an 
 agony. Some of our men sat stupid and 
 inert. Others kept talking constantly about 
 the most inconsequential matters. One man 
 undertook to tell a funny story. No one lis- 
 tened to it, and the laugh at the end was 
 emaciated and ghastly. The inaction was 
 driving us all into a state of funk. I could 
 actually feel my nerve oozing out at my fin- 
 ger tips, and, if we had had to wait fifteen 
 minutes longer, I shouldn't have been able 
 to climb out of the trench. 
 
 About half an hour before we were to go 
 over, every man had his eye up the trench 
 for we knew "the rummies" were coming 
 that way. The rum gang serves out a stiff 
 shot of Jamaica just before an attack, and 
 it would be a real exhibition of temperance 
 to see a man refuse. There were no prohibi- 
 
 [70] 
 
THE BOMBING RAID 
 
 tionists in our set. Whether or not we got 
 our full ration depended on whether the ser- 
 geant in charge was drunk or sober. After 
 the shot began to work, one man next to me 
 pounded my leg and hollered in my ear: 
 
 "I say. Why all this red tape? Let's go 
 over now." 
 
 That noggin' of rum is a life saver. 
 
 When the hour approached for us to start, 
 the artillery fire was so heavy that orders 
 had to be shouted into ears, from man to 
 man. The bombardment was, of course, 
 along a couple of miles of front, so that the 
 Germans would not know where to expect 
 us. At twelve o'clock exactly they began 
 pulling down a section of the parapet so that 
 we wouldn't have to climb over it, and we 
 were off. 
 
 [7i 
 
"OVER THE TOP AND GIVE 'EM HELL' 
 
 [73l 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 "over the top and give 'em hell 1 
 
 As we climbed out of the shelter of our 
 trenches for my first — and, perhaps, my last, 
 I thought — adventure in "No Man's Land, 1 ' 
 the word was passed : 
 
 "Over the top and give 'em hell!" 
 
 That is the British Tommies' battle cry 
 as they charge the enemy and it has often 
 sounded up and down those long lines in 
 western France as the British, Canadian, 
 and Australian soldiers go out to the fight 
 and the death. 
 
 We were divided into six parties of ten 
 men, each party having separate duties to 
 perform. We crouched forward, moving 
 slowly in single file, stumbling into shell 
 holes and over dead men — some very long 
 dead — and managing to keep in touch with 
 each other through the machine-gun bullets 
 
 [75] 
 
BEST LUCK 
 
 began to drop men almost immediately. 
 Once we were started, we were neither fear- 
 ful, nor rattled. We had been drilled so 
 long and so carefully that each man knew 
 just what he was to do and he kept right on 
 doing it unless he got hit. To me, it seemed 
 the ground was moving back under me. 
 The first ten yards were the toughest. The 
 thing was perfectly organized. Our last 
 party of ten was composed of signallers. 
 They were paying out wires and carrying 
 telephones to be used during the til teen 
 minutes of our stay in the German trenches 
 in communicating with our battalion head- 
 quarters. A telephone code had been ar- 
 ranged, using the names of our commanding 
 officers as smybols. "Rexford i" meant, 
 "First prisoners being sent back"; "Rexford 
 2" meant, "Our iirst wounded being sent 
 over"; "Rexford 3" meant, "We have en- 
 tered German trench. " The code was very 
 complete and the signallers had been drilled 
 in it for a week. In case the telephone wires 
 were cut, the signallers were to send mes- 
 sages back by the use of rirle grenades. 
 
 [76] 
 
"over the TOP AND give -em hell" 
 
 These arc rifle projectiles which carry little 
 metal cylinders to contain written messages, 
 and which hurst into flame when they strike 
 the earth, so that they can be easily found at 
 night. The officer in charge of the signal- 
 lers was to remain at the point of entrance, 
 with his eyes on his watch. It was his duty 
 to sound a warning signal five minutes be- 
 fore the end of our time in the German 
 trenches. 
 
 The leader of every party of ten also had 
 a whistle with which to repeat the warning 
 blast and then the final blast, when each man 
 was to drop everything and get back of our 
 artillery fire. We were not to leave any 
 dead or wounded in the German trench, on 
 account of the information which the Ger- 
 mans might thus obtain. Before starting on 
 the raid, we had removed all marks from 
 our persons, including even our identifica- 
 tion discs. Except for the signallers, each 
 party of ten was similarly organized. First, 
 there were two bayonet men, each with an 
 electric flash light attached to his rifle so as 
 to give light for the direction of a bayonet 
 
 177] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 thrust and controlled by a button at the left- 
 hand grasp of the rifle. Besides his rifle, each 
 of these men carried six or eight Mills No. 
 5 hand grenades, weighing from a pound 
 and five ounces to a pound and seven ounces 
 each. These grenades are shaped like tur- 
 key eggs, but slightly larger. Upon with- 
 drawing the firing pin, a lever sets a four- 
 second fuse going. One of these grenades 
 will clean out anything living in a ten-foot 
 trench section. It will also kill the man 
 throwing it, if he holds it more than four 
 seconds, after he has pulled the pin. The 
 third man of each ten was an expert bomb 
 thrower, equipped as lightly as possible to 
 give him freedom of action. He carried a 
 few bombs, himself, but the main supply 
 was carried by a fourth man who was not to 
 throw any unless the third man became a 
 casualty, in which case number four was to 
 take his place. The third man also carried a 
 knob-kerrie — a heavy bludgeon to be used 
 in whacking an enemy over the head. The 
 kind we used was made by fastening a heavy 
 steel nut on a stout stick of wood — a very 
 
 [78] 
 
"OVER THE TOP AND GIVE 'EM HELL" 
 
 business-like contrivance. The fourth man, 
 or bomb carrier, besides having a large sup- 
 ply of Mills grenades, had smoke bombs, to 
 be used in smoking the Germans out of dug- 
 outs and, later, if necessary, in covering our 
 retreat, and also fumite bombs. The latter 
 are very dangerous to handle. They con- 
 tain a mixture of petrol and phosphorous, 
 and weigh three pounds each. On explod- 
 ing they release a liquid fire which will burn 
 through steel. 
 
 The fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth in 
 line, were called utility men. They were to 
 take the places of any of the first four who 
 might become casualties. In addition, they 
 carried two Stokes-gun bombs, each. These 
 weigh nine pounds apiece, have six-second 
 fuses, and can be used in wrecking dug-outs. 
 The ninth and tenth men were sappers, car- 
 rying slabs of gun-cotton and several hun- 
 dred yards of instantaneous fuse. This ex- 
 plosive is used in demolishing machine-gun 
 emplacements and mine saps. The sappers 
 were to lay their charges while we were at 
 work in the trenches, and explode them as 
 
 [79] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 soon as our party was far enough out on the 
 return journey to be safe from this danger. 
 In addition to these parties of ten, there 
 were three of us who carried bombs and had 
 orders to keep near the three officers, to take 
 the place of any one of them that might go 
 down, and meanwhile to use our own judg- 
 ment about helping the jolly old party 
 along. I was one of the three. 
 
 In addition to the raiding party, proper, 
 there was a relay all across "No Man's 
 Land/' at ten paces interval, making a hu- 
 man chain to show us our way back, to assist 
 the wounded and, in case of opportunity or 
 necessity, to re-enforce us. They were or- 
 dered not to leave their positions when we 
 began to come back, until the last man of 
 our party had been accounted for. The final 
 section of our entourage was composed of 
 twelve stretcher-bearers, who had been spe- 
 cially trained with us, so that they would be 
 familiar with the trench section which we 
 were to raid. 
 
 There were two things which made it pos- 
 sible for our raiding party to get started 
 
 [So] 
 
"over the top and give 'em hell" 
 
 across "No Man's Land." One was the mo- 
 mentary quickening of the blood which fol- 
 lows a big and unaccustomed dose of rum, 
 and the other was a sort of subconscious, me- 
 chanical confidence in our undertaking, 
 which was a result of the scores of times we 
 had gone through every pre-arranged move- 
 ment in the duplicate German trenches be- 
 hind our lines. Without either of those in- 
 fluences, we simply could not have left shel- 
 ter and faced what was before us. 
 
 An intensified bombardment from our 
 guns began just as soon as we had 
 climbed "over the top" and were lining up 
 for the journey across. "Lining up" is not 
 just a suitable term. We were crawling 
 about on all fours, just far enough out in 
 "No Man's Land" to be under the edge of 
 the German shell-fire, and taking what shel- 
 ter we could in shell-holes while our leaders 
 picked the way to start across. The extra 
 heavy bombardment had warned the Ger- 
 mans that something was about to happen. 
 They sent up star shells and "S. O. S." sig- 
 nals, until there was a glare over the torn 
 
 [81] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 earth like that which you see at the grand 
 finish of a Pain's fire-works display, and 
 meanwhile they sprayed "No Man's Land" 
 with streams of machine-gun fire. In the 
 face of that, we started. 
 
 It would be absurd to say that we were 
 not frightened. Thinking men could not 
 help but be afraid. If we were pallid — 
 which undoubtedly we were — the black 
 upon our faces hid it, but our fear-struck 
 voices were not disguised. They trembled 
 and our teeth chattered. 
 
 We sneaked out, single file, making our 
 way from shell-hole to shell-hole, nearly all 
 the time on all fours, crawling quickly over 
 the flat places between holes. The Ger- 
 mans had not sighted us, but they were 
 squirting machine-gun bullets all over the 
 place like a man watering a lawn with a 
 garden hose, and they were bound to get 
 some of us. Behind me, I heard cries of 
 pain, and groans, but this made little im- 
 pression on my benumbed intelligence. 
 From the mere fact that whatever had 
 happened had happened to one of the 
 
 [82] 
 
"OVER THE TOP AND GIVE 'EM HELL" 
 
 other sections of ten and not to my own, it 
 seemed, some way or another, no affair to 
 concern me. Then a man in front of me 
 doubled up suddenly and rolled into a shell- 
 hole. That simply made me remember very 
 clearly that I was not to stop on account of 
 it. It was some one else's business to pick 
 that man up. Next, according to the queer 
 psychology of battle, I began to lose my 
 sensation of fear and nervousness. After I 
 saw a second man go down, I gave my atten- 
 tion principally to a consideration of the ir- 
 regularities of the German parapet ahead of 
 us, picking out the spot where we were to 
 enter the trench. It seems silly to say it, 
 but I seemed to get some sort of satisfaction 
 out of the realization that we had lost the 
 percentage which we might be expected to 
 lose, going over. Now, it seemed, the rest 
 of us were safe until we should reach the 
 next phase of our undertaking. I heard di- 
 rections given and I gave some myself. My 
 voice was firm, and I felt almost calm. 
 Our artillery had so torn up the Ger- 
 man barbed wire that it gave us no 
 
 [83] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 trouble at all. We walked through it with 
 only a few scratches. When we reached the 
 low, sand-bag parapet of the enemy trench, 
 we tossed in a few bombs and followed them 
 right over as soon as they had exploded. 
 There wasn't a German in sight. They were 
 all in their dug-outs. But we knew pretty 
 well where every dugout was located, and 
 we rushed for the entrances with our bombs. 
 Everything seemed to be going just as we 
 had expected it to go. Two Germans ran 
 plump into me as I round a ditch angle, 
 with a bomb in my hand. They had their 
 hands up and each of them yelled: 
 
 "Mercy, Kamaradl" 
 
 I passed them back to be sent to the rear, 
 and the man who received them from me 
 chuckled and told them to step lively. The 
 German trenches were practically just as we 
 had expected to find them, according to our 
 sample. They were so nearly similar to the 
 duplicate section in which we had practiced 
 that we had no trouble finding our way in 
 them. I was just thinking that really the 
 only tough part of the job remaining would 
 
 [84] 
 
"over the top and give 'em hell" 
 
 be getting back across "No Man's Land," 
 when it seemed that the whole earth behind 
 me, rose in the air. For a moment I was 
 stunned, and half blinded by dirt blown 
 into my face. When I was able to see, I 
 discovered that all that lay back of me was 
 a mass of upturned earth and rock, with here 
 and there a man shaking himself or scramb- 
 ling out of it or lying still. 
 
 Just two minutes after we went into their 
 trench, the Germans had exploded a mine 
 under their parapet. I have always believed 
 that in some way or another they had learned 
 which spot we were to raid, and had pre- 
 pared for us. Whether that's true or not, 
 one thing is certain. That mine blew our 
 organization, as we would say in Kentucky, 
 "plumb to Hell." And it killed or disabled 
 more than half of our party. 
 
 There was much confusion among those 
 of us who remained on our feet. Some one 
 gave an order to retire and some one coun- 
 termanded it. More Germans came out of 
 their dug-outs, but, instead of surrendering 
 as per our original schedule, they threw 
 
 [85] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 bombs amongst us. It became apparent that 
 we should be killed or captured if we stuck 
 there and that we shouldn't get any more 
 prisoners. I looked at my wrist watch and 
 saw that there remained but five minutes 
 more of the time which had been allotted 
 for our stay in the trench, so I blew my 
 whistle and started back. I had seen Pri- 
 vate Green (No. 177,250) knocked down 
 by a bomb in the next trench section, and I 
 picked him up and carried him out over the 
 wrecked parapet. I took shelter with him 
 in the first shell-hole but found that he 
 was dead and left him there. A few yards 
 further back toward our line I found Lance 
 Corporal Glass in a shell-hole, with part of 
 his hip shot away. He said he thought he 
 could get back if I helped him, and I started 
 with him. Private Hunter, who had been 
 in a neighboring shell-hole came to our as- 
 sistance, and between us, Hunter and I got 
 Glass to our front trench. 
 
 We found them lining up the survivors 
 of our party for a roll call. That showed 
 so many missing that Major John Lewis, 
 
 [86] 
 
u OVER THE TOP AND GIVE 'EM HELL" 
 
 our company commander, formerly manag- 
 ing-editor of the Montreal Star, called for 
 volunteers to go out in "No Man's Land" 
 and try to find some of our men. Corporal 
 Charleson, Private Saunders and I went 
 out. We brought in two wounded, and we 
 saw a number of dead, but, on account of 
 their blackened faces, were unable to iden- 
 tify them. The scouts, later, brought in 
 several bodies. 
 
 Of the sixty odd men who had started in 
 our party, forty-three were found to be casu- 
 alties — killed, wounded, or missing. The 
 missing list was the longest. The names of 
 these men were marked, "M. B. K." (miss- 
 ing, believed killed) on our rolls. I have 
 learned since that some few of them 
 have been reported through Switzerland 
 as prisoners of war in Germany, but 
 most of them are now officially listed as 
 dead. 
 
 All of the survivors of the raiding party 
 were sent twenty miles to the rear at seven 
 o'clock, and the non-commissioned officers 
 were ordered to make reports in writing 
 
 [87] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 concerning the entire operation. We re- 
 corded, each in his own way, the ghastly 
 failure of our first aggressive effort against 
 the Germans, before we rolled into the hay 
 in the same old barn where we had been 
 quartered during the days of preparation for 
 the raid. I was so dead tired that I soon 
 fell asleep, but not for long. I never slept 
 more than an hour at a time for several days 
 and nights. I would doze off from sheer ex- 
 haustion, and then suddenly find myself sit- 
 ting straight up, scared half to death, all 
 over again. 
 
 There may be soldiers who don't get 
 scared when they know they are in danger 
 or even when people are being killed right 
 around them, but I'm not one of them. And 
 I've never met any of them yet. I know a 
 boy who won the Military Medal, in the 
 battle of the Somme, and I saw him on his 
 knees before his platoon commander, shame- 
 lessly crying that he was a coward and beg- 
 ging to be left behind, just when the order to 
 advance was given. 
 
 Soldiers of our army who read this story 
 
 [88] 
 
"over the top and give 'em hell" 
 
 will probably observe one thing in particu- 
 lar, and that is the importance of bombing 
 operations in the present style of warfare. 
 You might say that a feature of this war has 
 been the renaissance of the grenadier. Only 
 British reverence for tradition kept the 
 name of the Grenadiers alive, through a con- 
 siderable number of wars. Now, in every 
 offensive, big or small, the man who has 
 been trained to throw a bomb thirty yards is 
 busier and more important than the fellow 
 with the modern rifle which will shoot a 
 mile and a half and make a hole through a 
 house. In a good many surprising ways this 
 war has carried us back to first principles. 
 I remember a Crusader's mace which I once 
 saw in the British museum that would make 
 a bang-up knob-kerrie, much better than the 
 kind with which they arm our Number 4 
 men in a raiding party section. It had a 
 round, iron head with spikes all over it. I 
 wonder that they haven't started a factory 
 to turn them out. 
 
 As I learned during my special training 
 in England, the use of hand grenades was 
 
 [89] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 first introduced in warfare by the French, in 
 1667. The British did not use them until ten 
 years later. After the battle of Waterloo 
 the hand grenade was counted an obsolete 
 weapon until the Japanese revived its use in 
 the war with Russia. The rude grenades 
 first used by the British in the present war 
 weighed about eight pounds. To-day, in the 
 British army, the men who have been 
 trained to throw grenades — now of lighter 
 construction and much more efficient and 
 certain action — are officially known as 
 "bombers." for this reason: When grenade 
 lighting came hack to its own in this war, 
 each battalion trained a certain number of 
 men in the use of grenades, and, naturally, 
 called them "grenadiers. " The British 
 Grenadier Guards, the senior foot regiment 
 in the British Army, made formal com- 
 plaint against the use of their time-honored 
 name in this connection, and British rev- 
 erence for tradition did the rest. The 
 Grenadiers were no longer grenadiers, but 
 they were undoubtedly the Grenadiers. The 
 war office issued a formal order that battal- 
 
 [90] 
 
"OVER the top and give 'em HELL" 
 
 ion grenade throwers should be known as 
 "bombers" and not as "grenadiers." 
 
 Up to the time when 1 left France we had 
 some twenty-seven varieties of grenades, but 
 most of them were obsolete or ineffective, 
 and we only made use of seven or eight 
 sorts. The grenades were divided into two 
 principal classes, rifle grenades and hand 
 grenades. The rifle grenades are discharged 
 from a rifle barrel by means of a blank car- 
 tridge. Each grenade is attached to a slen- 
 der rod which is inserted into the bore of 
 the rifle, and the longer the rod the greater 
 the range of the grenade. The three princi- 
 pal rifle grenades are the Mills, the Hales, 
 and the Newton, the former having a maxi- 
 mum range of 120 yards, and the latter of 
 400 yards. A rifle discharging a Mills 
 grenade may be fired from the shoulder, as 
 there is no very extraordinary recoil, but in 
 using the others it is necessary to fasten the 
 rifle in a stand or plant the butt on the 
 ground. Practice teaches the soldier how 
 much elevation to give the rifle for different 
 ranges. The hand grenades are divided also 
 
 [91] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 into two classes, those which are dis- 
 charged by percussion, and those which have 
 time fuses, with detonators of fulminate of 
 mercury. The high explosives used are am- 
 monal, abliste and sabulite, but ammonal is 
 the much more commonly employed. There 
 are also smoke bombs, the Mexican or tonite 
 bomb, the Hales hand grenade, the No. 19 
 grenade and the fumite bomb, which con- 
 tains white phosphorous, wax and petrol, 
 and discharges a stream of liquid fire which 
 will quickly burn out a dug-out and every- 
 thing it contains. Hand grenades are al- 
 ways thrown with a stiff arm, as a bowler 
 delivers a cricket ball toward the wicket. 
 They cannot be thrown in the same manner 
 as a baseball for two reasons. One is that 
 the snap of the wrist with which a baseball 
 is sent on its way would be likely to cause 
 the premature discharge of a percussion 
 grenade, and the second is that the grenades 
 weigh so much — from a pound and a half to 
 ten pounds — that the best arm in the world 
 couldn't stand the strain of whipping them 
 off as a baseball is thrown. I'm talking by 
 
 [92] 
 
"over the top and give 'em hell" 
 
 the book about this, because I've been a 
 bomber and a baseball player. 
 
 A bomber, besides knowing all about the 
 grenades in use in his own army, must have 
 practical working knowledge concerning 
 the grenades in use by the enemy. After 
 we took the Regina trench, on the Somme, 
 we ran out of grenades at a moment when 
 a supply was vitally necessary. We found 
 a lot of the German "egg" bombs, and 
 through our knowledge of their workings 
 and our consequent ability to use them 
 against their original owners we were able 
 to hold the position. 
 
 An officer or non-commissioned officer in 
 charge of a bombing detail must know inti- 
 mately every man in his command, and have 
 such discipline that every order will be car- 
 ried out with scrupulous exactitude when 
 the time comes. The leader will have no 
 time, in action, to prompt his men or even 
 to see if they are doing what they have been 
 told to do. When a platoon of infantry is in 
 action one rifleman more or less makes little 
 difference, but in bombing operations each 
 
 [93] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 man has certain particular work to do and 
 he must do it, just as it has been planned, in 
 order to protect himself and his comrades 
 from disaster. If you can out-throw the 
 enemy, or if you can make most of the 
 bombs land with accuracy, you have a won- 
 derful advantage in an attack. But throw- 
 ing wild or throwing short you simply give 
 confidence to the enemy in his own offen- 
 sive. One very good thrower may win an 
 objective for his squad, while one man who 
 is faint-hearted or unskilled or "rattled" 
 may cause the entire squad to be anni- 
 hilated. 
 
 In the revival of bombing, some tricks 
 have developed which would be humorous 
 if the denouments were not festooned with 
 crepe and accompanied by obituary nota- 
 tions on muster rolls. There may be some- 
 thing which might be termed funny on one 
 end of a bombing-ruse — but not on both 
 ends of it. Whenever you fool a man with 
 a bomb, you're playing a practical joke on 
 him that he'll never forget. Even, probably, 
 he'll never get a chance to remember it. 
 
 [94] 
 
"OVER THE TOP AND GIVE 'EM HELL" 
 
 When the Canadians first introduced 
 bombing, the bombs were improvised out of 
 jam tins, the fuses were cut according to the 
 taste and judgment of the individual 
 bomber, and, just when the bomb would ex- 
 plode, was more or less problematical. 
 Frequently, the Germans have tossed our 
 bombs back into our trenches before they 
 went off. That was injurious and irritating. 
 They can't do that with a Mills grenade 
 nor with any of the improved factory-made 
 bombs, because the men know just how they 
 are timed and are trained to know just how 
 to throw them. The Germans used to work 
 another little bomb trick of their own. 
 They learned that our scouts and raiders 
 were all anxious to get a German helmet as 
 a souvenir. TheyM put helmets on the 
 ground in "No Man's Land," or in an ad- 
 vanced trench with bombs under them. In 
 several cases, men looking for souvenirs sud- 
 denly became mere memories, themselves. 
 In several raids, when bombing was new, the 
 Canadians worked a trick on the Germans 
 with extensively fatal effect. They tossed 
 
 [0*1 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 bombs into the German trenches with six- 
 inch fuses attached. To the Germans they 
 looked just like the other bombs we had 
 been using, and, in fact they were — all but 
 the fuses. Instead of having tailed to con- 
 tinue burning, as the Germans thought, 
 those fuses had never been lighted. They 
 were instantaneous fuses. The ignition 
 spark will travel through instantaneous fuse 
 at the rate of about thirty yards a second. 
 A German would pick up one of these 
 bombs, select the spot where he intended to 
 blow up a few of us with our own ammonal, 
 and then light the fuse. After that there had 
 to be a new man in his place. The bomb 
 would explode instantly the long fuse was 
 ignited. 
 
 The next day when I got up after this 
 disastrous raid, I said to my bunkie: 
 
 "Got a fag?" ( Fag is the Tommy's name 
 for a cigarette.) 
 
 It's never, "will you have a fag?" but al- 
 ways, "have you got a fag?" 
 
 They are the inseparable companions of 
 the men at the front, and you'll see the sol- 
 
 [96] 
 
"over the top and give 'em hell" 
 
 diers go over the top with an unlit fag in 
 their lips. Frequently, it is still there when 
 their work is done. 
 
 As we sat there smoking, my friend said: 
 "Something sure raised hell with our cal- 
 culations." 
 
 "Like those automatic self-cocking revol- 
 vers did with a Kentucky wedding when 
 some one made a remark reflecting on the 
 bride," I replied. 
 
 It may be interesting to note that Corpl. 
 Glass, Corpl. Charleson and Private (later 
 Corpl.) Saunders have all since been 
 "Killed in Action." Charleson and Saun- 
 ders the same morning I was wounded on 
 the Somme, and Glass, Easter morning at 
 Vimy Ridge, when the Canadians made 
 their wonderful attack. 
 
 [97] 
 
SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 
 
 [»] 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 
 
 A few days after the bombing raid, which 
 ended so disastrously for us, our battalion 
 was relieved from duty on the front line, and 
 the tip we got was that we were to go down 
 to the big show then taking place on the 
 Somme. Our relief was a division of Aus- 
 tralians. You see, the sector which we had 
 held in Belgium was a sort of preparatory 
 school for the regular fighting over in 
 France. 
 
 It wasn't long before we got into what 
 you might call the Big League contest but, 
 in the meanwhile, we had a little rest from 
 battling Fritz and the opportunity to ob- 
 serve some things which seem to me to be 
 worth telling about. Those of you who are 
 exclusively fond of the stirring detail of 
 war, such as shooting and being shot at and 
 
 [IOI] 
 
BEST O' LUCK 
 
 bombing and bayoneting, need only skip a 
 little of this. We had an entirely satisfac- 
 tory amount of smoke and excitement later. 
 
 As soon as our relief battalion had got in, 
 we moved back to Renninghelst for a couple 
 of days rest. We were a pretty contented 
 and jovial lot — our platoon, especially. We 
 were all glad to get away from the strain of 
 holding a front trench, and there were other 
 advantages. For instance, the alterations of 
 our muster roll due to casualties, had not 
 come through battalion headquarters and, 
 therefore, we had, in our platoon, sixty-three 
 rum rations, night and morning, and only 
 sixteen men. There was a Canadian Scot in 
 our crowd who said that the word which 
 described the situation was "g-r-r-r-a-nd!" 
 
 There was a good deal of jealousy at that 
 time between the Canadians and the Aus- 
 tralians. Each had the same force in the 
 field — tour divisions. Either force was big- 
 ger than any other army composed exclu- 
 sively of volunteers ever before assembled. 
 While I belong to the Canadian army and 
 believe the Canadian overseas forces the 
 
 102] 
 
SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 
 
 finest troops ever led to war, I must say that 
 I have never seen a body of men so magnifi- 
 cent in average physique as the Australians. 
 And some of them were even above the high 
 average. The man that punched me in the 
 eye in an "estaminet" in Poperinghe made 
 up entirely in his own person for the ab- 
 sence of Les Darcy from the Australian 
 ranks. I don't know just how the fight 
 started between the Australians and us, in 
 Poperinghe, but I know that it took three 
 regiments of Imperial troops to stop it. The 
 most convincing story I heard of the origin 
 of the battle was told me by one of our men 
 who said he was there when it began. He 
 said one of the Australians had carelessly re- 
 marked that the British generals had de- 
 cided it was time to get through with the 
 side-show in Belgium and this was the rea- 
 son why they had sent in regular troops like 
 the Australians to relieve the Canadians. 
 
 Then some sensitive Canadian wished the 
 Australians luck and hoped they'd finish it 
 up as well as they had the affair in the Dar- 
 danelles. After that, our two days' rest was 
 
 [103I 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 made up principally of beating it out of 
 "estaminets" when strategic requirements 
 suggested a new base, or beating it into 
 "estaminets" where it looked as if we could 
 act as efficient re-inforcements. The fight 
 never stopped for forty-eight hours, and the 
 only places it didn't extend to were the 
 church and the hospitals. I'll bet, to this 
 day, that the Belgians who run the "estami- 
 nets" in Poperinghe will duck behind the 
 bars if you just mention Canada and Aus- 
 tralia in the same breath. 
 
 But Tin bound to say that it was good, 
 clean fighting. Nobody fired a shot, no- 
 body pulled a bayonet, and nobody got the 
 wrong idea about anything. The Australian 
 heavy-weight champion who landed on me 
 went right out in the street and saluted one 
 of our lieutenants. We had just one satis- 
 fying reflection after the fight was over. 
 The Australian battalion that relieved us 
 fell heir to the counter attack which the 
 Germans sent across to even up on our 
 bombing raid. 
 
 We began our march to the Somme by a 
 
 [104] 
 
SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 
 
 hike to St. Ohmcr, one of the early British 
 headquarters in Europe. Then we stopped 
 for a week about twenty miles from Calais, 
 where we underwent a course of intensified 
 training for open fighting. The infantry 
 tactics, in which we were drilled, were very 
 similar to those of the United States army 
 — those which, in fact, were originated by 
 the United States troops in the days of In- 
 dian fighting. We covered most of the 
 ground around Calais on our stomachs in 
 open order. While it may seem impertinent 
 for me, a mere non-com., to express an opin- 
 ion about the larger affairs of the campaign, 
 I think I may be excused for saying that 
 the war didn't at all take the course which 
 was expected and hoped for after the fight 
 on the Somme. Undoubtedly, the Allies ex- 
 pected to break through the German line. 
 That is well known now. While we were 
 being trained near Calais for open warfare, 
 a very large force of cavalry was being as- 
 sembled and prepared for the same purpose. 
 It was never used. 
 That was last August, and the Allies 
 
 [105] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 haven't broken through yet. Eventually I 
 believe they will break through, but, in 
 my opinion, men who are waiting now 
 to learn if they are to be drawn for 
 service in our new American army will 
 be veterans in Europe before the big break 
 comes, which will wreck the Prussian 
 hope of success in this war. And if we of 
 the U. S. A. don't throw in the weight to 
 beat the Prussians now, they will not be 
 beaten, and, in that case, the day will not be 
 very far distant when we will have to beat 
 them to save our homes and our nation. War 
 is a dreadful and inglorious and ill-smelling 
 and cruel thing. But if we hold back now, 
 we will be in the logical position of a man 
 hesitating to go to grips with a savage, 
 shrieking, spewing maniac who has all but 
 whipped his proper keepers, and is going 
 after the on-looker next. 
 
 We got drafts of recruits before we went 
 on to the Somme, and some of our wounded 
 men were sent back to England, where we 
 had left our "Safety-first Battalion." That 
 was really the Fifty-first battalion, of the 
 
 [106] 
 
SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 
 
 Fourth Division of the Canadian forces, 
 composed of the physically rejected, men 
 recovering from wounds, and men injured 
 in training. The Tommies, however, called 
 it the "Safety-first," or "Major Gilday's 
 Light Infantry." Major Gilday was our 
 battalion surgeon. He was immensely pop- 
 ular, and he achieved a great name for him- 
 self. He made one realize what a great 
 personal force a doctor can be and what an 
 unnecessary and overwrought elaboration 
 there is in the civil practice of medicine. 
 
 Under Major Gilday's administration, no 
 man in our battalion was sick if he could 
 walk, and, if he couldn't walk, there was a 
 reasonable suspicion that he was drunk. 
 The Major simplified the practice of medi- 
 cine to an exact science involving just two 
 forms of treatment and two remedies— 
 "Number Nines" and whale oil. Number 
 Nines were pale, oval pills, which, if they 
 had been eggs, would have run about eight 
 to an omelette. They had an internal effect 
 which could only be defined as dynamic. 
 After our men had become acquainted with 
 
 [107I 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 them through personal experience they 
 stopped calling them "Number Nines" and 
 called them "whiz-bangs." There were only 
 two possibilities of error under Major Gil- 
 day's system of simplified medicine. One 
 was to take a whiz-bang for trench feet, and 
 the other to use whale oil externally for 
 some form of digestional hesitancy. And, in 
 either case, no permanent harm could result, 
 while the error was as simple of correction 
 as the command "about face." 
 
 There was a story among our fellows that 
 an ambulance had to be called for Major 
 Gilday, in London, one day, on account of 
 shock following a remark made to him by 
 a bobby. The Major asked the policeman 
 how he could get to the Cavoy Hotel. The 
 bobby, with the proper bus line in mind, re- 
 plied: "Take a number nine, sir." 
 
 Two weeks and a half after we left Bel- 
 gium we arrived at Albert, having marched 
 all the way. The sight which met our eyes 
 as we rounded the rock-quarry hill, outside 
 of Albert, was wonderful beyond descrip- 
 tion. I remember how tremendously it im- 
 
 [108] 
 
SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 
 
 pressed my pal, Macfarlane. He sat by the 
 roadside and looked 'round over the land- 
 scape as if he were fascinated. 
 
 "Boy," said he, "we're at the big show at 
 last." 
 
 Poor fellow, it was not only the big show, 
 but the last performance for him. Within 
 sight of the spot where he sat, wondering, 
 he later fell in action and died. The scene, 
 which so impressed him, gave us all a feel- 
 ing of awe. Great shells from a thou- 
 sand guns were streaking and criss-crossing 
 the sky. Without glasses I counted thirty- 
 nine of our observation balloons. Away of! 
 in the distance I saw one German captive 
 balloon. The other air-craft were uncount- 
 able. They were everywhere, apparently in 
 hundreds. There could have been no more 
 wonderful panoramic picture of war in its 
 new aspect. 
 
 Our battalion was in and out of the town 
 of Albert several days waiting for orders. 
 The battle of Courcelette was then in prog- 
 ress, and the First, Second and Third Cana- 
 dian divisions were holding front positions 
 
 [109] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 at terrible cost. In the first part of October, 
 1916, we "went in" opposite the famous Re- 
 gina trench. The battle-ground was just 
 miles :\nd miles of debris and shell-holes. 
 Before we went to our position, the officers 
 and non-coms, were taken in bv scouts to get 
 the lay of the land. These trips were called 
 "Cook's Tours.* 1 On one oi them I went 
 through the town of Poziers twice and 
 didn't know it. It had a population of 
 12,000 before the war. On the spot where 
 it had stood not even a whole brick was left, 
 it seemed. Its demolition was complete. 
 That was .m example of the condition oi the 
 whole country over which our forces had 
 blasted their way for ten miles, since the 
 previous July. There were not even land- 
 marks lett. 
 
 The town oi Albert will always remain 
 in my memory, and, especially, 1 shall al- 
 wavs have the mental picture of the cathe- 
 dral, with the statue ot the Virgin Mary with 
 the Babe in her arms, apparently about to 
 topple from the roof. German shells had 
 carried aw av so much of the base oi the 
 
 [no] 
 
SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 
 
 statue that it inclined at an angle of 45 de- 
 grees. The Germans — for some reason 
 which only they can explain — expended 
 much ammunition in trying to complete the 
 
 destruction of the cathedral, but they did 
 Hot succeed and they'll never do it now. 
 The superstitious French say that when the 
 statue tails the war will end. 1 have a due 
 regard for sacred things, but if the omen 
 were to be depended upon I should not re- 
 gret to see the tail occur. 
 
 An unfortunate and tragic mishap oc- 
 curred just outside of Albert when the 
 Somme offensive started on July 1. The 
 signal for the first advance was to be the 
 touching off of a big mine. Some fifteen 
 minutes before the mine exploded the Ger- 
 mans set otf one of their own. Two regi- 
 ments mistook this for the signal and started 
 over. They ran simultaneously into their 
 own barrage and a German fire, and were 
 simply cut to pieces in as little time, almost, 
 as it takes to say it. 
 
 The Germans are methodical to such an 
 extent that at times this usually excellent 
 
 [in] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 quality acts to defeat their own ends. An 
 illustration of this was presented during the 
 bombardment of Albert. Every evening at 
 about six o'clock they would drop thirty 
 high-explosive shells into the town. When 
 we hoard the first one coming we would dive 
 for the cellars. Everyone would remain 
 counting the explosions until the number 
 had readied thirty. Then everyone 
 would come up from the cellars and go 
 about his business. There were never thirty- 
 one shells and never twenty-nine shells. 
 The number was always exactly thirty, and 
 then the high-explosive bombardment was 
 over. Knowing this, none of us ever got 
 hurt. Their methodical "evening hate" was 
 wasted, except for the damage it did to 
 buildings in the town. 
 
 On the night when we went in to occupy 
 the positions we were to hold, our scouts, 
 leading us through the flat desert of de- 
 struction, got completely turned 'round, and 
 took us back through a trench composed of 
 shell-holes, connected up, until we ran into 
 a battalion of another brigade. The place 
 
 [112] 
 
SHIFTED TO TIIK SOMME 
 
 was dreadful beyond words. The stench of 
 the dead was sickening. In many places 
 arms and legs of dead men stuck out of the 
 trench walls. 
 
 We made a fresh start, after our blunder, 
 moving in single file and keeping in touch 
 each with the man ahead of him. We stum- 
 bled along in the darkness through this 
 awful labyrinth until we ran into some of 
 our own scouts at 2 A.M., and found that we 
 were half-way across "No Man's Land," 
 several hundred yards beyond our front line 
 and likely to be utterly wiped out in twenty 
 seconds should the Germans sight us. At 
 last we reached the proper position, and fif- 
 teen minutes after we got there a whiz-bang 
 buried me completely. They had to dig me 
 out. A few minutes later another high-ex- 
 plosive shell fell in a trench section where 
 three of our men were stationed. All we 
 could find after it exploded were one arm 
 and one leg which we buried. The trenches 
 were without trench mats, and the mud was 
 from six inches to three feet deep all 
 through them. There were no dug-outs; 
 
 [113] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 only miserable "funk holes," dug where it 
 was possible to dig them without uncover- 
 ing dead men. We remained in this posi- 
 tion four days, from the 17th to the 21st of 
 October, 191 6. 
 
 There were reasons, of course, for the dif- 
 ference between conditions in Belgium and 
 on the Somme. On the Somme, we were 
 constantly preparing for a new advance, and 
 we were only temporarily established on 
 ground which we had but recently taken, 
 after long drumming with big guns. The 
 trenches were merely shell-holes connected 
 by ditches. Our old and ubiquitous and use- 
 ful friend, the sand bag, was not present in 
 any capacity, and, therefore, we had no 
 parapets or dug-outs. The communication 
 trenches were all blown in and everything 
 had to come to us overland, with the result 
 that we never were quite sure when we 
 should get ammunition, rations, or relief 
 forces. The most awful thing was that the 
 soil all about us was filled with freshly- 
 buried men. I f we undertook to cut a trench 
 or enlarge a funk hole, our spades struck 
 
 [114] 
 
SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 
 
 into human flesh, and the explosion of a big 
 shell along our line sent decomposed and 
 dismembered and sickening mementoes of 
 an earlier fight showering amongst us. We 
 lived in the muck and stench of "glorious" 
 war; those of us who lived. 
 
 Here and there, along this line, were the 
 abandoned dug-outs of the Germans, and we 
 made what use of them we could, but that 
 was little. I had orders one day to locate 
 a dug-out and prepare it for use as battalion 
 headquarters. When I led a squad in to 
 clean it up the odor was so overpowering 
 that we had to wear our gas masks. On 
 entering, with our flashlights, we first saw 
 two dead nurses, one standing with her 
 arm 'round a post, just as she had stood 
 when gas or concussion killed her. Seated 
 at a table in the middle of the place was the 
 body of an old general of the German medi- 
 cal corps, his head fallen between his hands. 
 The task of cleaning up was too dreadful 
 for us. We just tossed in four or five f umite 
 bombs and beat it out of there. A few hours 
 later we went into the seared and empty 
 
 [115] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 cavern, made the roof safe with new 
 timbers, and notified battalion headquarters 
 that the place could be occupied. 
 
 During this time I witnessed a scene 
 which — with some others — I shall never 
 forget. An old chaplain of the Canadian 
 forces came to our trench section seeking the 
 grave of his son, which had been marked 
 for him on a rude map by an officer who 
 had seen the young man's burial. We man- 
 aged to find the spot, and, at the old chap- 
 lain's request, we exhumed the body. Some 
 of us suggested to him that he give us the 
 identification marks and retire out of range 
 of the shells which were bursting all around 
 us. We argued that it was unwise for him 
 to remain unnecessarily in danger, but what 
 we really intended was that he should be 
 saved the horror of seeing the pitiful thing 
 which our spades were about to uncover. 
 
 "I shall remain," was all he said. "He 
 was my boy." 
 
 It proved that we had found the right 
 body. One of our men tried to clear the 
 features with his handkerchief, but ended by 
 
 [116] 
 
SHIFTED TO THE SOMME 
 
 spreading the handkerchief over the face. 
 The old chaplain stood beside the body and 
 removed his trench helmet, baring his gray 
 locks to the drizzle of rain that was falling. 
 Then, while we stood by with bowed heads, 
 his voice rose amid the noise of bursting 
 shells, repeating the burial service of the 
 Church of England. I have never been so 
 impressed by anything in my life as by that 
 scene. 
 
 The dead man was a young captain. He 
 had been married to a lady of Baltimore, 
 just before the outbreak of the war. 
 
 The philosophy of the British Tommies, 
 and the Canadians and the Australians on 
 the Somme was a remarkable reflection of 
 their fine courage through all that hell. 
 They go about their work, paying no atten- 
 tion to the flying death about them. 
 
 "If Fritz has a shell with your name and 
 number on it," said a British Tommy to me 
 one day, "you're going to get it whether 
 you're in the front line or seven miles back. 
 If he hasn't, you're all right." 
 
 Fine fighters, all. And the Scotch kilties, 
 
 [117] 
 
BEST O' LUCK 
 
 lovingly called by the Germans, "the women 
 from hell," have the respect of all armies. 
 We saw little of the Poilus, except a few on 
 leave. All the men were self-sacrificing to 
 one another in that big melting pot from 
 which so few ever emerge whole. The only 
 things it is legitimate to steal in the code of 
 the trenches are rum and "fags" (ciga- 
 rettes). Every other possession is as safe as 
 if it were under a Yale lock. 
 
 [n8] 
 
WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 t«9l 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 Our high command apparently meant to 
 make a sure thing of the general assault 
 upon the Regina trench, in which we were 
 to participate. Twice the order to "go 
 over the top" was countermanded. The 
 assault was first planned for October 19th. 
 Then the date was changed to the 20th. 
 Finally, at 12 : 00 noon, of October 21st, we 
 went. It was the first general assault we had 
 taken part in, and weyvere in a highly nerv- 
 ous state. I'll admit that. 
 
 It seemed almost certain death to start 
 over in broad daylight, yet, as it turned out, 
 the crossing of "No Man's Land" was ac- 
 complished rather more easily than in our 
 night raids. Our battalion was on the ex- 
 treme right of the line, and that added ma- 
 terially to our difficulties, first by compel- 
 
 [121] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 ling us to advance through mud so deep that 
 some of our men sank to their hips in it and, 
 second, by giving us the hottest little spot in 
 France to hold later. 
 
 I was in charge of the second "wave" or 
 assault line. This is called the "mopping 
 up" wave, because the business of the men 
 composing it is thoroughly to bomb out 
 a position crossed by the first wave, to 
 capture or kill all of the enemy remaining, 
 and to put the trench in a condition to 
 be defended against a counter attack by 
 reversing the fire steps and throwing up 
 parapets. 
 
 While I was with the Canadians, all at- 
 tacks, or rather advances, were launched in 
 four waves, the waves being thirty to fifty 
 yards apart. A wave, I might explain, is 
 a line of men in extended order, or about 
 three paces apart. Our officers were in- 
 structed to maintain their places in the line 
 and to wear no distinguising marks which 
 might enable sharpshooters to pick them off. 
 Invariably, however, they led the men out 
 of our trenches. "Come on, boys, let's go," 
 
 [122] 
 
WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 they would say, climbing out in advance. It 
 was bred in them to do that. 
 
 Experience had taught us that it took the 
 German barrage about a minute and a half 
 to get going after ours started, and that they 
 always opened up on our front line trench. 
 We had a plan to take advantage of this 
 knowledge. We usually dug an "assembly 
 trench" some distance in advance of our front 
 line, and started from it. Thus we were able 
 to line up between two fires, our shells 
 bursting ahead of us, and the Germans' be- 
 hind us. All four waves started from the 
 assembly trench at once, the men of the sec- 
 ond, third and fourth waves falling back to 
 their proper distances as the advance pro- 
 ceeded. The first wave worked up to within 
 thirty to fifty yards of our own barrage and 
 then the men lay down. At this stage, our 
 barrage was playing on the enemy front line 
 trench. After a certain interval, carefully 
 timed, the gunners, away back of our lines, 
 elevated their guns enough to carry our bar- 
 rage a certain distance back of the enemy 
 front trench and then our men went in at 
 
 [123] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 the charge, to occupy the enemy trench be- 
 fore the Germans in the dugouts could 
 come out and organize a defense. Unless 
 serious opposition was met the first wave 
 went straight through the first trench, leav- 
 ing only a few men to guard the dugout 
 entrances pending the arrival of the second 
 wave. The second wave, only a few seconds 
 behind the first one, proceeded to do the 
 "mopping up." Then this wave, in turn, 
 went forward, leaving only a few men be- 
 hind to garrison the captured trench. 
 
 The third and fourth waves went straight 
 on unless assistance was needed, and rushed 
 up to the support of the new front line. The 
 men in these waves were ammunition car- 
 riers, stretcher-bearers and general reen- 
 forcements. Some of them were set to work 
 at once digging a communication trench to 
 connect our original front line with our new 
 support and front lines. When we estab- 
 lished a new front line we never used the 
 German trench. We had found that the 
 German artillery always had the range of 
 that trench down, literally speaking, to an 
 
 [124] 
 
WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 inch. We always dug a new trench either 
 in advance of the German trench or in the 
 rear of it. Our manner of digging a trench 
 under these circumstances was very simple 
 and pretty sure to succeed except in an ex- 
 tremely heavy fire. Each man simply got 
 as flat to the ground as possible, seeking 
 whatever cover he might avail himself of, 
 and began digging toward the man nearest 
 him. Sand bags were filled with the first 
 dirt and placed to afford additional cover. 
 The above system of attack, which is now 
 well known to the Germans, was, at the time 
 when I left France, the accepted plan when 
 two lines of enemy trenches were to be taken. 
 It has been considerably changed, now, I am 
 told. If the intention was to take three, four, 
 five or six lines, the system was changed only 
 in detail. When four or more lines were to 
 be taken, two or more battalions were assem- 
 bled to operate on the same frontage. The 
 first battalion took two lines, the second 
 passed through the first and took two more 
 lines, and so on. The Russians had been 
 known to launch an attack in thirty waves. 
 
 [125] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 It is interesting to note how every attack, 
 nowadays, is worked out in advance in the 
 smallest detail, and how everything is done 
 on a time schedule. Aerial photographs of 
 the position they are expected to capture are 
 furnished to each battalion, and the men are 
 given the fullest opportunity to study them. 
 All bombing pits, dugouts, trench mortar 
 and machine-gun emplacements are marked 
 on these photographs. Every man is given 
 certain work to do and is instructed and re- 
 instructed until there can be no doubt that 
 he has a clear knowledge of his orders. But, 
 besides that, he is made to understand the 
 scope and purpose and plan of the whole 
 operation, so that he will know what to do 
 if he finds himself with no officer to com- 
 mand. This is one of the great changes 
 brought about by this war, and it signalizes 
 the disappearance, probably forever, of a 
 long-established tradition. It is something 
 which I think should be well impressed 
 upon the officers of our new army, about to 
 enter this great struggle. The day has 
 passed when the man in the ranks is sup- 
 
 [ia6] 
 
WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 posed merely to obey. He must know what 
 to do and how to do it. He must think for 
 himself and "carry on" with the general 
 plan, if his officers and N. C. O.'s all be- 
 come casualties. Sir Douglas Haig said: 
 "For soldiers in this war, give me business 
 men with business sense, who are used to 
 taking initiative." 
 
 While I was at the front I had oppor- 
 tunity to observe three distinct types of bar- 
 rage fire, the "box," the "jumping," and the 
 "creeping." The "box," I have already de- 
 scribed to you, as it is used in a raid. The 
 "jumping" plays on a certain line for a cer- 
 tain interval and then jumps to another line. 
 The officers in command of the advance 
 know the intervals of time and space and 
 keep their lines close up to the barrage, mov- 
 ing with it on the very second. The "creep- 
 ing" barrage opens on a certain line and then 
 creeps ahead at a certain fixed rate of speed, 
 covering every inch of the ground to be 
 taken. The men of the advance simply walk 
 with it, keeping within about thirty yards 
 of the line on which the shells are falling. 
 
 [127] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 Eight-inch shrapnel, and high-explosive 
 shells were used exclusively by the British 
 when I was with them in maintaining bar- 
 rage fire. The French used their Seventy- 
 fives," which are approximately of eight- 
 inch calibre. Of late, I believe, the British 
 and French have both added gas shells for 
 this use, when conditions make it possible. 
 The Germans, in establishing a barrage, 
 used their "whiz-bangs," slightly larger 
 shells than ours, but they never seemed 
 to have quite the same skill and certitude 
 in barrage bombardment that our artillery- 
 men had. 
 
 To attempt to picture the scene of two 
 barrage fires, crossing, is quite beyond me. 
 You see two walls of flame in front of you, 
 one where your own barrage is playing, and 
 one where the enemy guns are firing, and 
 you see two more walls of flame behind you, 
 one where the enemy barrage is playing, 
 and one where your own guns are firing. 
 And amid it all you are deafened by titanic 
 explosions which have merged into one roar 
 of thunderous sound, while acrid fumes 
 
 [128] 
 
WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 choke and blind you. To use a fitting, if not 
 original phrase, it's just "Hell with the 
 lid off." 
 
 That day on the Somme, our artillery 
 had given the Germans such a bat- 
 tering and the curtain fire which our 
 guns dropped just thirty to forty yards 
 ahead of us was so powerful that we lost 
 comparatively few men going over — only 
 those who were knocked down by shells 
 which the Germans landed among us 
 through our barrage. They never caught 
 us with their machine guns sweeping until 
 we neared their trenches. Then a good 
 many of our men began to drop, but we were 
 in their front trench before they could cut us 
 up anywhere near completely. Going over, 
 I was struck by shell fragments on the hand 
 and leg, but the wounds were not severe 
 enough to stop me. In fact, I did not know 
 that I had been wounded until I felt blood 
 running into my shoe. Then I discovered 
 the cut in my leg, but saw that it was quite 
 shallow, and that no artery of importance 
 had been damaged. So I went on. 
 
 [129] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 I had the familiar feeling of nervousness 
 and physical shrinking and nausea at the be- 
 ginning of this fight, but, by the time we 
 were half way across "No Man's Land," I 
 had my nerve back. After I had been hit, 
 I remember feeling relieved that I hadn't 
 been hurt enough to keep me from going on 
 with the men. I'm not trying to make my- 
 self out a hero. I'm just trying to tell you 
 how an ordinary man's mind works under 
 the stress of fighting and the danger of sud- 
 den death. There are some queer things in 
 the psychology of battle. For instance, 
 when we had got into the German trench 
 and were holding it against the most vig- 
 orous counter attacks, the thought which was 
 persistently uppermost in my mind was that 
 I had lost the address of a girl in London 
 along with some papers which I had thrown 
 away, just before we started over, and which 
 I should certainly never be able to find 
 again. 
 
 The Regina trench had been taken and lost 
 three times by the British. We took it that 
 day and held it. We went into action with fif- 
 
 [130] 
 
WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 teen hundred men of all ranks and came out 
 with six hundred. The position, which was 
 the objective of our battalion, was opposite 
 to and only twelve hundred yards distant 
 from the town of Pys, which, if you take the 
 English meaning of the French sound, was a 
 highly inappropriate name for that particu- 
 lar village. During a good many months, 
 for a good many miles 'round about that 
 place, there wasn't any such thing as 
 "Peace." From our position, we could see 
 a church steeple in the town of Baupaume 
 until the Germans found that our gunners 
 were using it as a "zero" mark, and blew it 
 down with explosives. 
 
 I have said that, because we were on the 
 extreme right of the line, we had the hottest 
 little spot in France to hold for a while. 
 You see, we had to institute a double defen- 
 sive, as we had the Germans on our front 
 and on our flank, the whole length of the 
 trench to the right of us being still held by 
 the Germans. There we had to form a 
 "block," massing our bombers behind a bar- 
 ricade which was only fifteen yards from the 
 
 [131] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 barricade behind which the Germans were 
 fighting. Our flank and the German flank 
 were in contact as fiery as that of two live 
 wire ends. And, meanwhile, the Fritzes 
 tried to rush us on our front with nine sepa- 
 rate counter attacks. Only one of them got 
 up close to us, and we went out and stopped 
 that with the bayonet. Behind our block 
 barricade, there was the nearest approach to 
 an actual fighting Hell that I had seen. 
 
 And yet a man who was in the midst of 
 it from beginning to end, came out without 
 a scratch. He was a tall chap named Hun- 
 ter. For twenty-four hours, without inter- 
 ruption, he threw German "egg-shell" 
 bombs from a position at the center of our 
 barricade. He never stopped except to light 
 a cigarette or yell for some one to bring him 
 more bombs from Fritz's captured store- 
 house. He projected a regular curtain of 
 fire of his own. Fve no doubt the Germans 
 reported he was a couple of platoons, work- 
 ing in alternate reliefs. He was awarded 
 the D. C. M. for his services in that fight, 
 and though, as I said, he was unwounded, 
 
 [132] 
 
WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 half the men around him were killed, and 
 his nerves were in such condition at the end 
 that he had to be sent back to England. 
 
 One of the great tragedies of the war re- 
 sulted from a bit of carelessness when, a 
 couple of days later, the effort was made to 
 extend our grip beyond the spot which we 
 took in that first fight. Plans had been made 
 for the Forty-fourth Battalion of the Tenth 
 Canadian Brigade to take by assault the 
 trench section extending to the right from 
 the point where we had established the 
 "block" on our flank. The hour for the at- 
 tack had been fixed. Then headquarters 
 sent out countermanding orders. Some- 
 thing wasn't quite ready. 
 
 The orders were sent by runners, as all 
 confidential orders must be. Telephones 
 are of little use, now, as both our people 
 and the Germans have an apparatus which 
 needs only to be attached to a metal spike 
 in the ground to "pick up" every telephone 
 message within a radius of three miles. 
 When telephones are used now, messages 
 are ordinarily sent in code. But, for 
 
 1*33] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 any vitally important communication which 
 might cost serious losses, if misunderstood, 
 old style runners are used, just as they were 
 in the days when the field telephone was un- 
 heard of. It is the rule to dispatch two or 
 three runners by different routes so that one, 
 at least, will be certain to arrive. In the 
 case of the countermanding of the order for 
 the Forty-fourth Battalion to assault the 
 German position on our flank, some officer 
 at headquarters thought that one messenger 
 to the Lieut.-Colonel commanding the For- 
 ty-fourth would be sufficient. The messen- 
 ger was killed by a chance shot and his mes- 
 sage was undelivered. The Forty-fourth, in 
 ignorance of change of plan, "went over." 
 There was no barrage fire to protect the 
 force and their valiant effort was simply a 
 wholesale suicide. Six hundred out of eight 
 hundred men w r ere on the ground in two and 
 one-half minutes. The battalion was simply 
 wiped out. Several officers were court- 
 martialed as a result of this terrible blunder. 
 We had gone into the German trenches at 
 a little after noon, on Saturday. On Sun- 
 
 [i34] 
 
WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 day night at about 10 P.M. we were relieved. 
 The relief force had to come in overland, 
 and they had a good many casualities en 
 route. They found us as comfortable as 
 bugs in a rug, except for the infernal and 
 continous bombing at our flank barricade. 
 The Germans on our front had concluded 
 that it was useless to try to drive us out. 
 About one-fourth of the six hundred of us, 
 who were still on our feet, were holding the 
 sentry posts, and the remainder of the six 
 hundred were having banquets in the Ger- 
 man dugouts, which were stocked up like 
 delicatessen shops with sausages, fine canned 
 foods, champagne and beer. If we had only 
 had a few ladies with us, we could have had 
 a real party. 
 
 I got so happily interested in the spread 
 in our particular dugout that I forgot about 
 my wound until some one reminded me that 
 orders required me to hunt up a dressing 
 station, and get an anti-tetanus injection. I 
 went and got it, all right, but an injection 
 was about the only additional thing I could 
 have taken at that moment. If I had had to 
 
 [135] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 swallow anything more, it would have been 
 a matter of difficulty. Tommies like to take 
 a German trench, because if the Fritzes 
 have to move quickly, as they usually do, 
 we always find sausage, beer, and cham- 
 pagne — a welcome change from bully beef. 
 I could never learn to like their bread, how- 
 ever. 
 
 After this fight I was sent, with other 
 slightly wounded men, for a week's rest at 
 the casualty station, at Contay. I rejoined 
 my battalion at the end of the week. From 
 October 21st to November 1 8th we were in 
 and out of the front trenches several times 
 for duty tours of forty-eight hours each, but 
 were in no important action. At 6: 10 A.M., 
 on the morning of November 18th, a bitter 
 cold day, we "went over" to take the Desire 
 and also the Desire support trenches. We 
 started from the left of our old position, and 
 our advance was between Thieval and Poi- 
 zers, opposite to Grandecourt. 
 
 There was the usual artillery prepara- 
 tion and careful organization for the attack. 
 
 [136] 
 
WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 I was again in charge of the "mopping up" 
 wave, numbering two hundred men and con- 
 sisting mostly of bombers. It may seem 
 strange to you that a non-commissioned offi- 
 cer should have so important an assignment, 
 but, sometimes, in this war, privates have 
 been in charge of companies, numbering 
 two hundred and fifty men, and I know of 
 a case where a lance-corporal was tempor- 
 arily in command of an entire battalion. It 
 happened, on this day that, while I was in 
 charge of the second wave, I did not go over 
 with them. At the last moment, I was given 
 a special duty by Major Lewis, one of 
 the bravest soldiers I ever knew, as well as 
 the best beloved man in our battalion. A 
 messenger came to me from him just as I 
 was overseeing a fair distribution of the rum 
 ration, and incidentally getting my own 
 share. I went to him at once. 
 
 "McClintock," said he, "I don't wish to 
 send you to any special hazard, and, so far 
 as that goes, we're all going to get more or 
 less of a dusting. But I want to put that 
 
 [i37] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 machine gun which has been giving us so 
 much trouble out of action." 
 
 I knew very well the machine gun he 
 meant. It was in a concrete emplacement, 
 walled and roofed, and the devils in charge 
 of it seemed to be descendents of William 
 Tell and the prophet Isaiah. They always 
 knew what was coming and had their gun 
 accurately trained on it before it came. 
 
 "If you are willing," said Major Lewis, 
 "I wish you to select twenty-five men from 
 the company and go after that gun the min- 
 ute the order comes to advance. Use your 
 own judgment about the men and the plan 
 for taking the gun position. Will you go?" 
 
 "Yes, sir," I answered. "I'll go and pick 
 out the men right away. I think we can 
 make those fellows shut up shop over there." 
 
 "Good boy!" he said. "You'll try, all 
 right." 
 
 I started away. He called me back. 
 
 "This is going to be a bit hot, McClin- 
 tock," he said, taking my hand. "I wish you 
 the best of luck, old fellow — you and the 
 rest of them." In the trenches they always 
 
 [138] 
 
WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 wish you the best of luck when they hand 
 you a particularly tough job. 
 
 I thanked him and wished him the same. 
 I never saw him again. He was killed in 
 action within two hours after our conversa- 
 tion. Both he and my pal, Macfarlane, 
 were shot down dead that morning. 
 
 When they called for volunteers to go 
 with me in discharge of Major Lewis' order, 
 the entire company responded. I picked out 
 twenty-five men, twelve bayonet men and 
 thirteen bombers. They agreed to my plan 
 which was to get within twenty-five yards of 
 the gun emplacement before attacking, to 
 place no dependence on rifle fire, but to 
 bomb them out and take the position with 
 the bayonet. We followed that plan and 
 took the emplacement quicker than we had 
 expected to do, but there were only two of 
 us left when we got there — Private Godsall, 
 No. 177,063, and myself. All the rest of 
 the twenty-five were dead or down. The 
 emplacement had been held by eleven Ger- 
 mans. Two only were left standing when 
 we got in. 
 
 [139] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 When we saw the gun had been silenced 
 and the crew disabled, Godsall and I 
 worked round to the right about ten yards 
 from the shell-hole where we had sheltered 
 ourselves while throwing bombs into the 
 emplacement, and scaled the German para- 
 pet. Then we rushed the gun position. The 
 officer who had been in charge was standing 
 with his back to us, firing with his revolver 
 down the trench at our men who were com- 
 ing over at another point. I reached him 
 before Godsall and bayoneted him. The 
 other German who had survived our bomb- 
 ing threw up his hands and mouthed the 
 Teutonic slogan of surrender, "Mercy, 
 Kamerad." My bayonet had broken off in 
 the encounter with the German officer, and 
 I remembered that I had been told always 
 to pull the trigger after making a bayonet 
 thrust, as that would usually jar the weapon 
 loose. In this case, I had forgotten instruc- 
 tions. I picked up a German rifle with 
 bayonet fixed, and Godsall and I worked on 
 down the trench. 
 
 The German, who had surrendered, stood 
 
 [140] 
 
WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 with his hands held high above his head, 
 waiting for us to tell him what to do. He 
 never took his eyes of! of us even to look at 
 his officer, lying at his feet. As we moved 
 down the trench, he followed us, still hold- 
 ing his hands up and repeating, "Mercy, 
 Kamerad!" At the next trench angle we 
 took five more prisoners, and as Godsall had 
 been slightly wounded in the arm, I turned 
 the captives over to him and ordered him to 
 take them to the rear. Just then the men 
 of our second wave came over the parapet 
 like a lot of hurdlers. In five minutes, we 
 had taken the rest of the Germans in the 
 trench section prisoners, had reversed the 
 fire steps, and had turned their own machine 
 guns against those of their retreating com- 
 panies that we could catch sight of. 
 
 As we could do nothing more here, I gave 
 orders to advance and reenforce the front 
 line. Our way led across a field furrowed 
 with shell-holes and spotted with bursting 
 shells. Not a man hesitated. We were win- 
 ning. That was all we knew or cared to 
 know. We wanted to make it a certainty for 
 
 [141] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 our fellows who had gone ahead. As we 
 were proceeding toward the German reserve 
 trench, I saw four of our men, apparently 
 unwounded, lying in a shell-hole. I stopped 
 to ask them what they were doing there. As 
 I spoke, I held my German rifle and bayo- 
 net at the position of "guard," the tip of the 
 bayonet advanced, about shoulder high. I 
 didn't get their answer, for, before they 
 could reply, I felt a sensation as if some one 
 had thrown a lump of hard clay and struck 
 me on the hip, and forthwith I tumbled in 
 on top of the four, almost plunging my bay- 
 onet into one of them, a private named Wil- 
 liams. 
 
 "Well, now you know what's the matter 
 with us," said Williams. "We didn't fall 
 in, but we crawled in." 
 
 They had all been slightly wounded. I 
 had twenty-two pieces of shrapnel and some 
 shell fragments imbedded in my left leg be- 
 tween the hip and the knee. I followed the 
 usual custom of the soldier who has got it." 
 The first thing I did was to light a "fag" 
 (cigarette) and the next thing was to inves- 
 
 [142] 
 
WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 tigate and determine if I was in danger of 
 bleeding to death. There wasn't much 
 doubt about that. Arterial blood was spurt- 
 ing from two of the wounds, which were re- 
 vealed when the other men in the hole 
 helped me to cut off my breeches. With 
 their aid, I managed to stop the hemorrhage 
 by improvising tourniquets with rags and 
 bayonets. One I placed as high up as possi- 
 ble on the thigh and the other just below the 
 knee. Then we all smoked another "fag" 
 and lay there, listening to the big shells go- 
 ing over and the shrapnel bursting near us. 
 It was quite a concert, too. We discussed 
 what we ought to do, and finally I said: 
 
 "Here; you fellows can walk, and I can't. 
 Furthermore, you're not able to carry me, 
 because you've got about all any of you can 
 do to navigate alone. It doesn't look as if 
 its going to be any better here very soon. 
 You all proceed to the rear, and, if you can 
 get some one to come after me, I'll be 
 obliged to you." 
 
 They accepted the proposition, because it 
 was good advice and, besides, it was orders. 
 
 [143] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 I was their superior officer. And what hap- 
 pened right after that confirmed me forever 
 in my early, Kentucky-bred conviction that 
 there is a great deal in luck. They couldn't 
 have travelled more than fifty yards from the 
 shell-hole when the shriek of a high-explo- 
 sive seemed to come right down out of the 
 sky into my ears, and the detonation, which 
 instantly followed, shook the slanting sides of 
 the shell-hole until dirt in dusty little 
 rivulets came trickling down upon me. 
 Wounded as I was, I dragged myself up to 
 the edge of the hole. There was no trace, 
 anywhere, of the four men who had just left 
 me. They have never been heard of since. 
 Their bodies were never found. The big 
 shell must have fallen right amongst them 
 and simply blown them to bits. 
 
 It was about a quarter to seven in the 
 morning when I was hit. I lay in the shell- 
 hole until two in the afternoon, suffering 
 more from thirst and cold and hunger than 
 from pain. At two o'clock, a batch of 
 sixty prisoners came along under escort. 
 They were being taken to the rear un- 
 
 [i44] 
 
WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 der fire. The artillery bombardment 
 was still practically undiminished. I 
 asked for four of the prisoners and made one 
 of them get out his rubber ground sheet, car- 
 ried around his waist. They responded wil- 
 lingly, and seemed most ready to help me. 
 I had a revolver (empty) and some bombs 
 in my pockets, but I had no need to threaten 
 them. Each of the four took a corner 
 of the ground sheet and, upon it, they half 
 carried and half dragged me toward the 
 rear. 
 
 It was a trip which was not without inci- 
 dent. Every now and then we would hear 
 the shriek of an approaching "coal box," 
 and then my prisoner stretcher-bearers and 
 I would tumble in one indiscriminate heap 
 into the nearest shell-hole. If we did that 
 once, we did it a half dozen times. After 
 each dive, the four would patiently reorga- 
 nize and arrange the improvised stretcher 
 again, and we would proceed. Following 
 every tumble, however, I would have to 
 tighten my tourniquets, and, despite all I 
 could do, the hemorrhage from my wound 
 
 [145] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 continued so profuse that I was begin- 
 ning to feel very dizzy and weak. On 
 the way in, I sighted our regimental dress- 
 ing station and signed to my four bearers to 
 carry me toward it. The station was in an 
 old German dugout. Major Gilday was at 
 the door. He laughed when he saw me 
 with my own special ambulance detail. 
 
 "Well, what do you want? 1 ' he asked. 
 
 "Most of all," I said, "I think I want a 
 drink of rum." 
 
 He produced it for me instantly. 
 
 "Now," said he, "my advice to you is to 
 keep on travelling. You've got a fine spe- 
 cial detail there to look after you. Make 
 'em carry you to Poizers. It's only five 
 miles, and you'll make it all right. I've got 
 this place loaded up full, no stretcher- 
 bearers, no assistants, no adequate supply 
 of bandages and medicines, and a lot of 
 very bad cases. If you want to get out of 
 here in a week, just keep right on going, 
 now." 
 
 As we continued toward the rear, we were 
 the targets for a number of humorous re- 
 
 [146] 
 
WOUNDED IN ACTION 
 
 marks from men coming up to go into the 
 fight. 
 
 "Give my regards to Blighty, you lucky 
 beggar," was the most frequent saying. 
 
 "Bli' me," said one Cockney Tommy. 
 "There goes one o' th' Canadians with an 
 escort from the Kaiser." 
 
 Another man stopped and asked about my 
 wound. 
 
 "Good work," he said. "I'd like to have 
 a nice clean one like that, myself." 
 
 I noticed one of the prisoners grinning at 
 some remark and asked him if he understood 
 English. He hadn't spoken to me, though 
 he had shown the greatest readiness to help 
 me. 
 
 "Certainly I understand English," he re- 
 plied. "I used to be a waiter at the Knick- 
 erbocker Hotel, in New York." That 
 sounded like a voice from home, and I 
 wanted to hug him. I didn't. However, I 
 can say for him he must have been a good 
 waiter. He gave me good service. 
 
 Of the last stages of my trip to Poizers I 
 cannot tell anything for I arrived uncon- 
 
 [147] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 scious from loss of blood. The last I re- 
 member was that the former waiter, evi- 
 dently seeing that I was going out, asked me 
 to direct him how to reach the field dress- 
 ing station at Poizers and whom to ask for 
 when he got there. I came back to con- 
 sciousness in an ambulance on the way to 
 Albert. 
 
 [148] 
 
A VISIT FROM THE KING 
 
 [i49l 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 A VISIT FROM THE KING 
 
 I was taken from Poizers to Albert in a 
 Ford ambulance, or, as the Tommies would 
 say, a "tin Lizzie." The man who drove this 
 vehicle would make a good chauffeur for 
 an adding machine. Apparently, he was 
 counting the bumps in the road for he didn't 
 miss one of them. However, the trip was 
 only a matter of seven miles, and I was in 
 fair condition when they lifted me out and 
 carried me to an operating table in the field 
 dressing station. 
 
 A chaplain came along and murmured a 
 little prayer in my ear. I imagine that 
 would make a man feel very solemn if 
 he thought there was a chance he was 
 about to pass out, but I knew I merely had 
 a leg pretty badly smashed up, and, while 
 the chaplain was praying, I was wondering 
 
 -[151] 
 
BEST (/ LUCK 
 
 if they would have to cut it off. I figured, 
 if so, this would handicap my dancing. 
 
 The first formality in a shrapnel case is 
 the administration of an anti-tetanus inocu- 
 lation, and, when it is done, you realize that 
 they are sure trying to save your life. The 
 doctor uses a horse-syringe, and the injec- 
 tion leaves a lump on your chest as big as 
 a base ball which stays there for forty- 
 eight hours. After the injection a nurse 
 fills out a diagnosis blank with a description 
 of your wounds and a record of your name, 
 age, regiment, regimental number, religion, 
 parentage, and previous history as far as she 
 can discover it without asking questions 
 which would be positively indelicate. After 
 all of that, my wounds were given their first 
 real dressing. 
 
 Immediately after this was done, I was 
 bundled into another ambulance — this time 
 a Cadillac — and driven to Contay where the 
 CCS. (casualty clearing station) and rail- 
 head were located. In the ambulance with 
 me went three other soldiers, an artillery 
 officer and two privates of infantry. We 
 
 [152] 
 
A VISIT FROM THE KING 
 
 were all ticketed off as shrapnel cases, and 
 probable recoveries, which latter detail is 
 remarkable, since the most slightly injured 
 in the four had twelve wounds, and there 
 were sixty odd shell fragments or shrapnel 
 balls collectively imbedded in us. The 
 head nurse told me that I had about twenty 
 wounds. Afterward her count proved con- 
 servative. More accurate and later returns 
 showed twenty-two bullets and shell frag- 
 ments in my leg. 
 
 We were fairly comfortable in the ambu- 
 lance, and I, especially, had great relief 
 from the fact that the nurse had strapped my 
 leg in a sling attached to the top of the vehi- 
 cle. We smoked cigarettes and chatted 
 cheerfully, exchanging congratulations on 
 having got "clean ones," that is, wounds 
 probably not fatal. The artillery officer 
 told me he had been supporting our bat- 
 talion, that morning, with one of the "sacri- 
 fice batteries." A sacrifice battery, I might 
 explain, is one composed of field pieces 
 which are emplaced between the front and 
 support lines, and which, in case of an at- 
 
 [1531 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 tack or counter attack, are fired at point- 
 blank range. They call them sacrifice bat- 
 teries because some of them are wiped out 
 every day. This officer said our battalion, 
 that morning, had been supported by an en- 
 tire division of artillery, and that on our 
 front of four hundred yards the eighteen 
 pounders, alone, in a curtain fire which 
 lasted thirty-two minutes, had discharged 
 fifteen thousand rounds of high-explosive 
 shells. 
 
 I was impressed by his statement, of 
 course, but I told him that while this was 
 an astonishing lot of ammunition, it was even 
 more surprising to have noticed at close 
 range, as I did, the number of Germans they 
 missed. Toward the end of our trip to Con- 
 tay, we were much exhausted and pretty 
 badly shaken up. We were beginning also 
 to realize that we were by no means out of 
 the woods, surgically. Our wounds had 
 merely been dressed. Each of us faced an 
 extensive and serious operation. We arrived 
 at Contay, silent and pretty much depressed. 
 For twenty-four hours in the Contay casu- 
 
 [i54] 
 
A VISIT FROM THE KING 
 
 alty clearing station, they did little except 
 feed us and take our temperatures hourly. 
 Then we were put into a hospital train for 
 Rouen. 
 
 Right here, I would like to tell a little 
 story about a hospital train leaving Contay 
 for Rouen — not the one we were on, but one 
 which had left a few days before. The 
 train, when it was just ready to depart with 
 a full quota of wounded men, was attacked 
 by German aeroplanes from which bombs 
 were dropped upon it. There is nothing, 
 apparently, that makes the Germans so fear- 
 less and ferocious as the Red Cross emblem. 
 On the top of each of the cars in this train 
 there was a Red Cross big enough to be seen 
 from miles in the air. The German aviators 
 accepted them merely as excellent targets. 
 Their bombs quickly knocked three or four 
 cars from the rails and killed several of the 
 helpless wounded men. The rest of the 
 patients, weak and nervous from recent 
 shock and injury, some of them half delir- 
 ious, and nearly all of them in pain, 
 were thrown into near-panic. Two of 
 
 [i55] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 the nursing sisters in charge of the 
 train were the coolest individuals present. 
 They walked calmly up and down its length, 
 urging the patients to remain quiet, direct- 
 ing the male attendants how to remove the 
 wounded men safely from the wrecked cars, 
 and paying no attention whatever to the 
 bombs which were still exploding near the 
 train. I did not have the privilege of wit- 
 nessing this scene myself, but I know that I 
 have accurately described it for the details 
 were told in an official report when the King 
 decorated the two sisters with the Royal 
 Red Cross, for valor in the face of the 
 enemy. 
 
 The trip from Contay to Rouen was a 
 nightmare — twenty-six hours travelling one 
 hundred and fifty miles on a train, which 
 was forever stopping and starting, its jerky 
 and uncertain progress meaning to us just 
 hours and hours of suffering. I do not know 
 whether this part of the system for the re- 
 moval of the wounded has been improved 
 now. Then, its inconveniences and imper- 
 fections must have been inevitable, for, in 
 
 156] 
 
A VISIT FROM THE KING 
 
 every way afterward, the most thoughtful 
 and tender care was shown us. In the long 
 row of huts which compose the British Gen- 
 eral Hospital at Rouen, we found ourselves 
 in what seemed like Paradise. 
 
 In the hut, which constituted the special 
 ward for leg wounds, I was lifted from the 
 stretcher on which I had travelled all the 
 way from Poizers into a comfortable bed 
 with fresh, clean sheets, and instantly I 
 found myself surrounded with quiet, 
 trained, efficient care. I forgot the pain of 
 my wounds and the dread of the coming op- 
 eration when a tray of delicious food was 
 placed beside my bed and a nurse prepared 
 me for the enjoyment of it by bathing my 
 face and hands with scented water. 
 
 On the following morning my leg was 
 X-rayed and photographed. I told the sur- 
 geon I thought the business of operating 
 could very well be put off until I had had 
 about three more square meals, but he 
 couldn't see it that way. In the afternoon, 
 I got my first sickening dose of ether, and 
 they took the first lot of iron out of me. I 
 
 [i57] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 suppose these were just the surface deposits, 
 for they only got five or six pieces. How- 
 ever, they continued systematically. I had 
 five more operations, and every time I came 
 out of the ether; the row of bullets and shell 
 scraps at the foot of my bed was a little 
 longer. After the number had reached 
 twenty-two, they told me that perhaps there 
 were a few more in there, but they thought 
 they'd better let them stay. My wounds had 
 become septic, and it was necessary to give 
 all attention to drainage and cure. It was 
 about this time that everything, for a while, 
 seemed to become hazy, and my memories 
 got all queerly mixed up and confused. I 
 recollect I conceived a violent dislike for a 
 black dog that appeared from nowhere, now 
 and then, and began chewing at my leg, and 
 I believe I gave the nurse a severe talking to 
 because she insisted on going to look on at 
 the ball game when she ought to be sitting 
 by to chase that dog away. And I was per- 
 fectly certain about her being at the ball 
 game, because I saw her there when I was 
 playing third base. 
 
 [158] 
 
A VISIT FROM THE KING 
 
 It was at this time (on November 28, 
 1916, ten days after I had been wounded) 
 that my father, in Lexington, received the 
 following cablegram from the officer in 
 charge of the Canadian records, in Eng- 
 land: 
 
 "Sincerely regret to inform you that Ser- 
 geant Alexander McClintock is officially 
 reported dangerously ill in No. 5 General 
 Hospital, from gunshot wound in left thigh. 
 Further particulars supplied when re- 
 ceived." 
 
 It appears that, during the time of my ad- 
 ventures with the black dog and the inatten- 
 tive nurse, my temperament had ascended to 
 the stage when the doctors begin to admit 
 that another method of treatment might 
 have been successful. But I didn't pass out. 
 The one thing I most regret about my close 
 call is that my parents, in Lexington, were 
 in unrelieved suspense about my condition 
 until I myself sent them a cable from Lon- 
 don, on December 15th. After the first- 
 official message, seemingly prepared almost 
 as a preface to the announcement of my de- 
 
 [i59] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 mise, my father received no news of me 
 whatever. And, as I didn't know that the 
 official message had gone, I cabled nothing 
 to him until I was feeling fairly chipper 
 again. You can't have wars, though, with- 
 out these little misunderstandings. 
 
 If it were possible, I should say some- 
 thing here which would be fitting and ade- 
 quate about the English women who nursed 
 the twenty-five hundred wounded men in 
 General Hospital No. 5, at Rouen. But 
 that power isn't given me. All I can do is 
 to fall back upon our most profound Ameri- 
 can expression of respect and say that my 
 hat is off to them. One nurse in the ward 
 in which I lay had been on her feet for 
 fifty-six hours, with hardly time, even to eat. 
 She finally fainted from exhaustion, was 
 carried out of the ward, and was back again 
 in four hours, assisting at an operation. And 
 the doctors were doing their bit, too, in liv- 
 ing up to the obligations which they consid- 
 ered to be theirs. An operating room was 
 in every ward with five tables in each. After 
 the fight on the Somme, in which I was 
 
 [160] 
 
A VISIT FROM THE KING 
 
 wounded, not a table was vacant any hour 
 in the twenty-four, for days at a time. Out- 
 side of each room was a long line of stretch- 
 ers containing patients next awaiting surgi- 
 cal attention. And in all that stress, I did 
 not hear one word of complaint from the 
 surgeons who stood, hour after hour, using 
 their skill and training for the petty pay of 
 English army medical officers. 
 
 On December 5th, I was told I was well 
 enough to be sent to England and, on the 
 next day, I went on a hospital train 
 from Rouen to Havre. Here I was 
 placed on a hospital ship which every 
 medical officer in our army ought to 
 have a chance to inspect. Nothing ingenu- 
 ity could contrive for convenience and com- 
 fort was missing. Patients were sent below 
 decks in elevators, and then placed in swing- 
 ing cradles which hung level no matter what 
 the ship's motion might be. As soon as I 
 had been made comfortable in my particu- 
 lar cradle, I was given a box which had 
 engraved upon it: "Presented with the com- 
 pliments of the Union Castle Line. May 
 
 [161] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 you have a speedy and good recovery." The 
 box contained cigarettes, tobacco, and a 
 pipe. 
 
 When the ship docked at Southampton, 
 after a run of eight hours across channel, 
 each patient was asked what part of the 
 British Isles he would like to be taken to 
 for the period of his convalescence. I re- 
 quested to be taken to London, where, I 
 thought, there was the best chance of my see- 
 ing Americans who might know me. Say, 
 I sure made a good guess. I didn't know 
 many Americans, but I didn't need to know 
 them. They found me and made themselves 
 acquainted. They brought things, and then 
 they went out to get more they had forgotten 
 to bring the first trip. The second day 
 after I had been installed on a cot in the 
 King George Hospital, in London, I sent 
 fifteen hundred cigarettes back to the boys 
 of our battalion in France out of my surplus 
 stock. If I had undertaken to eat and drink 
 and smoke all the things that were brought 
 to me by Americans, just because I was an 
 American, I'd be back in that hospital now, 
 
 [162] 
 
A VISIT FROM THE KING 
 
 only getting fairly started on the job. It's 
 some country when you need it. 
 
 The wounded soldier, getting back to 
 England, doesn't have a chance to imagine 
 that his services are not appreciated. The 
 welcome he receives begins at the railroad 
 station. All traffic is stopped by the Bob- 
 bies to give the ambulances a clear way 
 leaving the station. The people stand in 
 crowds, the men with their hats off, while 
 the ambulances pass. Women rush out and 
 throw flowers to the wounded men. Some- 
 times there is a cheer, but usually only 
 silence and words of sympathy. 
 
 The King George Hospital was built to 
 be a government printing office, and was 
 nearing completion when the war broke out. 
 It has been made a Paradise for convales- 
 cent men. The bareness and the sick sug- 
 gestion and characteristic smell of the 
 average hospital are unknown here. There 
 are soft lights and comfortable beds and 
 pretty women going about as visitors. 
 The stage beauties and comedians come and 
 entertain us. The food is delicious, and the 
 
 [163] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 chief thought of every one seems to be to 
 show the inmates what a comfortable and 
 cheery thing it is to be ill among a lot of 
 real friends. I was there from December 
 until February, and my recollections of the 
 stay are so pleasant that sometimes I wish I 
 was back. 
 
 On the Friday before Christmas there 
 was a concert in our ward. Among the ar- 
 tists who entertained us were Fay Compton, 
 Gertrude Elliott (sister of Maxine Elliott), 
 George Robie, and other stars of the Lon- 
 don stage. After our protracted stay in the 
 trenches and our long absence from all the 
 civilized forms of amusement, the affair 
 seemed to us the most wonderful show ever 
 given. And, in some ways, it was. For in- 
 stance, in the most entertaining of dramatic 
 exhibitions, did you ever see the lady artists 
 go around and reward enthusiastic applause 
 with kisses? Well that's what we got. And 
 I am proud to say that it was Miss Comp- 
 ton who conferred this honor upon me. 
 
 At about three o'clock on that afternoon, 
 when we were all having a good time, one 
 
 [164] 
 
A VISIT FROM THE KING 
 
 of the orderlies threw open the door of the 
 ward and announced in a loud voice that 
 His Majesty, the King, was coming in. We 
 could not have been more surprised if some 
 one had thrown in a Mills bomb. Almost 
 immediately the King walked in, accompan- 
 ied by a number of aides. They were all 
 in service uniforms, the King having 
 little in his attire to distinguish him 
 from the others. He walked around, pre- 
 senting each patient with a copy of "Queen 
 Mary's Gift Book," an artistic little volume 
 with pictures and short stories by the most 
 famous of English artists and writers. 
 When he neared my bed, he turned to one 
 of the nurses and inquired: 
 
 "Is this the one?" 
 
 The nurse nodded. He came and sat at 
 the side of the bed and shook hands with 
 me. He asked as to what part of the United 
 States I had come from, how I got my 
 wounds, and what the nature of them were, 
 how I was getting along, and what I par- 
 ticularly wished done for me. I answered 
 his questions and said that everything I 
 
 [165] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 could possibly wish for had already been 
 done for me. 
 
 "I thank you," he said, "for myself and 
 my people for your services. Our gratitude 
 cannot be great enough toward men who 
 have served us as you have." 
 
 He spoke in a very low voice and with no 
 assumption of royal dignity. There was 
 nothing in the least thrilling about the inci- 
 dent, but there was much apparent sincerity 
 in the few words. 
 
 After he had gone, one of the nurses asked 
 me what he had said. 
 
 "Oh," I said, "George asked me what I 
 thought about the way the war was being 
 conducted, and I said I'd drop in and talk 
 it over with him as soon as I was well 
 enough to be up." 
 
 There happened one of the great disap- 
 pointments of my life. She didn't see the 
 joke. She was English. She gasped and 
 glared at me, and I think she went out and 
 reported that I was delirious again. 
 
 Really, I wasn't much impressed by the 
 English King. He seemed a pleasant, tired 
 
 [166] 
 
A VISIT FROM THE KING 
 
 little man, with a great burden to bear, and 
 not much of an idea about how to bear it. 
 He struck me as an individual who would 
 conscientiously do his best in any situation, 
 but would never do or say anything with the 
 slightest suspicion of a punch about it. A few 
 days after his visit to the hospital, I saw in 
 the Official London Gazette that I had been 
 awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal. 
 Official letters from the Canadian headquar- 
 ters amplified this information, and a notice 
 from the British War Office informed me 
 that the medal awaited me there. I was 
 told the King knew that the medal had been 
 awarded to me, w T hen he spoke to me in the 
 hospital. Despite glowing reports in the 
 Kentucky press, he didn't pin it on me. 
 Probably he didn't have it with him. Or, 
 perhaps, he didn't consider it good form to 
 hang a D. C. M. on a suit of striped, pre- 
 sentation pajamas with a prevailing tone of 
 baby blue.* 
 
 * Editor's Note. — The medal was formally presented to 
 Sergt. McClintock by the British Consul General, in New- 
 York City, on August 15, 1917. 
 
 [167] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 While I was in the King George Hos- 
 pital I witnessed one of the most wonderful 
 examples of courage and pluck I had ever 
 seen. A young Scot, only nineteen years 
 old, McAuley by name, had had the greater 
 part of his face blown away. The surgeons 
 had patched him up in some fashion, but he 
 was horribly disfigured. He was the bright- 
 est, merriest man in the ward, always jok- 
 ing and never depressed. His own terrible 
 misfortune was merely the topic for humor- 
 ous comment with him. He seemed to get 
 positive amusement out of the fact that the 
 surgeons were always sending for him to do 
 something more with his face. One day he 
 was going into the operating room and a 
 fellow patient asked him what the new op- 
 eration was to be. 
 
 "Oh," he said, "I'm going to have a cab- 
 bage put on in place of a head. It'll grow 
 better than the one I have now." 
 
 Once in a fortnight he would manage to 
 get leave to absent himself from the hos- 
 pital for an hour or two. He never came 
 back alone. It took a couple of men to 
 
 [168] 
 
A VISIT FROM THE KING 
 
 bring him back. On the next morning, he 
 would say: 
 
 "Well, it was my birthday. A man must 
 have a few drinks on his birthday." 
 
 I was discharged from the hospital in the 
 middle of February and sent to a comfort- 
 able place at Hastings, Sussex, where I 
 lived until my furlough papers came 
 through. I had a fine time in London at 
 the theatres and clubs pending my depart- 
 ure for home. When my furlough had ar- 
 rived, I went to Buxton, Derbyshire, where 
 the Canadian Discharge Depot was located 
 and was provided with transportation to 
 Montreal. I came back to America on the 
 Canadian Pacific Royal Mail steamer, 
 Metagama, and the trip was without inci- 
 dent of any sort. We lay for a time in the 
 Mersey, awaiting word that our convoy was 
 ready to see us out of the danger zone, and 
 a destroyer escorted us four hundred miles 
 on our way. 
 
 I was informed, before my departure, that 
 a commission as lieutenant in the Canadian 
 forces awaited my return from furlough, 
 
 [169] 
 
BEST 0' LUCK 
 
 and I had every intention of going back to 
 accept it. But, since I got to America, 
 things have happened. Now, it's the army 
 of Uncle Sam, for mine. I've written these 
 stories to show what we are up against. It's 
 going to be a tough game, and a bloody one, 
 and a sorrowful one for many. But it's up 
 to us to save the issue where it's mostly right 
 on one side, and all wrong on the other — and 
 I'm glad we're in. I'm not willing to quit 
 soldiering now, but I will be when we get 
 through with this. When we finish up 
 with this, there won't be any necessity for 
 soldiering. The world will be free of war 
 for a long, long time — and a God's mercy, 
 that. Let me take another man's eloquent 
 words for my last ones : 
 
 Oh! spacious days of glory and of grieving! 
 
 Oh ! sounding hours of lustre and of loss; 
 Let us be glad we lived, you still believing 
 
 The God who gave the Cannon gave the Cross. 
 
 [170] 
 
A VISIT FROM THE KING 
 
 Let us doubt not, amid these seething passions, 
 The lusts of blood and hate our souls abhor : 
 
 The Power that Order out of Chaos fashions 
 Smites fiercest in the wrath-red forge of War. 
 
 Have faith ! Fight on ! Amid the battle-hell, 
 Love triumphs, Freedom beacons, All is well. 
 
 (Robert W. Service, "Rhymes of a Red Cross 
 Man.") 
 
 THE END. 
 
 [171] 
 
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