That was, I think, the first prisoner taken by the Twenty-first Battalion. The next was one whom I “captured” as he came over our parapet early one morning – a week or so later – and who turned out to be one of our Intelligence officers but, as he was wearing the full German uniform, I held him up and sent him back under guard. (You ought to have heard him swear.)
After that we picked them up, now and then; perhaps from a patrol, sometimes in a raid; but the first time we saw them in large numbers was during the St. Eloi fight. The Fusiliers and the Yorks grabbed off several hundred and sent them back through our lines. It seems that there was a story current in the German army that the Canadians always killed all prisoners and when these fellows found that they were to go through the Canadian lines they begged like good fellows. However they had to do it and, lo and behold, at every cook’s dug-out, they were served with tea and whatever else was available. Captors and captives fared alike and one poor little rascal who was so worn out that he could hardly struggle along, found a bed in my dugout and slept there all day – with my connivance, of course – and then made his own way back to our reserve lines.
In the actual heat of battle, when it comes to the final, hand-to-hand struggle, men revert to the elemental level of wild beasts and display the ferocity of a trapped tiger, killing remorselessly and indiscriminately, but, once the prisoner has been taken and sent to the rear, all such animosity is forgotten and he is treated very much as one of our own. Of course I know nothing of the conduct of the Germans in this respect or of our men who were taken prisoner (by the way, here is a good place to remark that the 21st never lost a man by capture), but I suppose it was about the same. Of course prisoners in the hands of the Germans did not get much to eat but neither did their captors – according to our standard of living, so they could not complain much on that score.
Later on – during the Somme battle, I saw them literally by the thousand (that is, German prisoners), and they all seemed to take their fate very philosophically. Evidently they had been well instructed as to how to act if captured. I have talked with many of them and have been present when they were interrogated by our intelligence officers and I never saw one who refused to give his name and regiment. (That is all any prisoner can be compelled to tell.) Sometimes they would tell a lot more – possibly true; perhaps not, but they all appeared to take the fact of their being captured as just a part of the war game and did not seem to grieve over-much about it. Some, I was inclined to think, were damn glad of it – glad to get out of it so easily. I can readily understand that attitude, although I never quite got to the point where I wanted to try it myself.
They went back to the barbed-wire stockades and from there to the permanent prison camps. Most of them were put to work on the roads or the docks at the sea-ports and appeared to be quite content to stay there and let the war take care of itself.
At first our men were so eager to get “souvenirs” that most of the prisoners went back sans belts or buttons but we always paid for them.
We would exchange French script (money) for German marks and gave them a fair price for anything we took. Later, we had no time for such trifles and, excepting for weapons, let them keep everything they had. I suppose the military police and other non-combatants back at the rear probably cleaned up on them, however.
Chapter 12. Duds, Misfires and Stuck Bolts
THIS is not supposed to be a history of the war but a story for riflemen, so we will have to skip along, sketching in the general operations and looking for places to “take a shot.”
During the latter stages of the St. Eloi operation there was scant opportunity for the rifleman. It was mostly a case of bomb ’em out of a crater and then get shelled out, yourself, the next day. All these minor actions took place at night but the days were not dull, by any means, as our positions were most persistently bombarded all the time.
I just happened to look at the calendar. Next Sunday will be Easter – and April 20th. A friend, sitting beside me, remarked that it was the latest he ever remembered Easter to come. Well; I remember one time it came a day later – April 21, 1916.
At that time, our line was simply a scattered lot of shell-holes, approximately where our real front line had been before the battle started. In each hole was a machine-gun crew and, sometimes, a few infantrymen. As the whole terrain was under direct observation from the enemy line, it was impossible to communicate with these detached posts in daylight, so we had to make our reliefs at night. Of course the enemy knew all about this and regularly swept the whole back area with both machine guns and whiz-bangs all night long, which made it a very interesting operation to get in and out. As sergeant, it was up to me to change these posts every night. The entire expanse of ground over which we must travel was literally leveled by shell fire. I say leveled, well, that is not quite right. It looked level, from a distance but it was one continuous field of shell-holes, just as close as the cells in a honeycomb – yes, closer, as these holes were locked and interlocked, one with another. Not a foot; no, not an inch of that ground had not been upturned more than once – and every depression was full of water.
To even find the various posts challenged the skill of an expert navigator – working by dead reckoning, alone. During all the time we were there, it rained continuously. Never a night was a star visible and the compass was useless, probably due to the fact that the ground was literally impregnated with iron and steel fragments from the shells. That we did manage to get the reliefs made at all was a matter to be proud of.
Even the Germans, themselves, starting from a point much nearer than we did, often got lost and straggled into our lines. A whole platoon of them wandered into our line one night and were captured without a struggle. And, I want to record, right here, that, during all this time, we never lost a man by capture.
Well, as I started out to say, the night of April 20th, one of our detachments (I think Corporal Johnstone was in charge) missed its objective and went on through the line and, after hunting around for a long time the men found themselves right up under the parapet of one of the craters, which was occupied, at that time, by the enemy. By that time it was getting daylight and the Corporal, after sizing up the situation, decided that the only thing to do was to dig in right there and wait until the next night, and that is just what they did. Stayed there all day within twenty feet of the Germans – Easter Sunday, 1916. Well I remember it, for I was out all day looking for them. During the day our artillery took a notion to shell that particular crater, which made it still more interesting for them. They all came back safely, soon after dark.
It was during one of the earlier stages of this battle that we learned that a rifle can be very much like a woman and that the lovable sweetheart of pre-nuptial days may fall far short of being the trustworthy and reliable helpmate in wedded life.
The first time we were called upon to repel a determined attack, and sustained rapid fire was in order, it was found that the Ross would not stand up under that kind of treatment. Wonderfully accurate weapon as it was, it was never built for fast, rough work. Never will I forget the time: one night when Heinie tried to rush our lines in one of his many charitable attempts to chase us out of our muddy muskrat holes and back on to the high and dry ground in our rear and we, with characteristic soldier perversity, declined to go, that I heard, during a little lull in the firing, a great voice, supplicating, praying, exhorting and, above all, cursing the whole Clan Ross. Investigation showed it to be “Big Dan” McGann, assiduously trying to open the bolt of his rifle, using a big chunk of wood as a persuader. During the short time allowed me to listen, I heard him specify each and every member of that family from away back – from the time of the “begats” down to the present generation, all designated by name and number, together with the most lurid and original adjectives it has ever been my pleasure to hear. It was marvelous, entrancing – just to hear that man swear – but we soon found out that he was only doing what we should have liked to do, had we his e
xtraordinary ability. The bolts would stick and all hell could not open them.
We had trained intensively with this Ross rifle, both on the Barriefield ranges in Canada and at Hythe, England, and had found it thoroughly reliable and accurate. Even in the strenuous rapid-fire tests, where fifteen shots per minute were required, it never failed. During a competition, one man fired thirty-three aimed shots (all on the target) in one minute, while many others exceeded twenty-five shots. In accuracy, up to six hundred yards, at least, it equalled or excelled any rifle I had or have since fired – the Springfield not excepted.
I have seen as many as forty consecutive bull’s-eyes made with it at three hundred yards – on the six inch bull – and correspondingly good scores at five and six hundred yards. We had no regular practice beyond the latter range but, on several occasions, I have used this rifle successfully at ranges up to one thousand yards or more.
Mindful of all this, it can well be understood that we went into action with all the confidence in the world in our rifles. Every man in the original battalion had fired hundreds, yes thousands of rounds, each with his own pet rifle, and knew just what he could do with it. He also knew how to take care of it, which is another very important thing. Cleaning accessories were difficult to find, but somehow or another, every man found some means to keep his rifle in serviceable condition, although it often meant the shortening of his shirt-tail by several inches.
The first complaint against the Ross rifle was based on the ground that it was too long and unwieldy for satisfactory use in narrow trenches or when crawling over open ground where the cover was sparse. It was difficult to handle it so as to avoid exposure to the enemy – especially with the bayonet fixed. However, as the French Lebel was equally long, and their bayonet much longer, this point did not carry much weight with the higher command. But when they commenced to freeze up on us, it was acknowledged that the matter was serious. They tried all sorts of stunts to remedy the trouble, sending the rifles out back of the lines to the armourer sergeants, who reamed the chambers out larger so the cartridge would not fit so tightly, and all that, but it was no go, and the ultimate solution was to take the Ross rifle out of the trenches and issue every infantryman the regulation Short Lee-Enfield rifle.
At that time and for several years after the war, I believed that all that trouble was due to some fundamental defect in the rifle itself, but since hearing from members of organizations in the First Division who participated in the earlier battles without noticing any such trouble, I am now inclined to the opinion that it might have been due, in part, at least, to the ammunition.
During the earlier stages of the war the ammunition was all from the old, established factories and arsenals – and it was made strictly according to standard specifications. Later, however, it became necessary to build and equip many other factories in order to keep up the supply, and as these establishments were, necessarily, manned (mostly with women) by new and unskilled workers, and their machines, tools and gauges also hastily built, it was no wonder that much of this ammunition would not function properly. We noticed it particularly in the machine guns. Some brands would not work at all and many others were woefully deficient, causing many stoppages and breakages, often at extremely critical times.
Dominion Cartridge Company and Kynock were generally dependable brands. Winchester was always dependable. U.M.C. and U.S. just about as good, and all three of these latter brands we prized highly. But there was some particularly rotten stuff coming from a factory up on the Hudson river, a “National something or other,” that was simply fierce to use even in rifles and was utterly impossible to even consider for use in a machine gun. This same corporation also made up millions of the same rotten stuff for the U.S. Army when they got into the war, and many thousands of rounds of it floated around for some years after the war.
This matter of insuring a sufficient supply of dependable ammunition is well known to our army leaders but it should be impressed upon the minds of those members of Congress who make the appropriations. Frankford Arsenal can easily produce all that is needed for our troops in peace time and can, no doubt, vastly increase that output in an emergency, but the moment war is declared this demand will increase at least fifty-fold. This figure is merely a snap-judgment, based on an army of from five to six million men, but if I am any kind of a prophet it will require more nearly ten millions in the next war in which the United States engages any first-class foreign power.
We must not be deceived by the fact that we got into the last war so easily – after three or four other powerful nations had fought the enemy to a stand-still for more than two and one-half years. Next time we are liable to get the brunt of the first onslaught and, as always, the attacking power will be better prepared in advance. The attacker always has this advantage. He knows what he intends to do. The attacked can only guess.
We have wandered off the track again, so let’s get back to that Ross rifle argument and finish it. When we learned that particular weakness, we commenced to use a little discretion in the matter of rapid fire and managed to do very well with them until they were exchanged for the Enfields. Our snipers, however, stuck to the Ross all through the war because of their better accuracy and incomparably better sights.
Before someone else asks the question, I am going to answer: “No, I never heard of a Ross bolt blowing out or coming back in a man’s face, until several years after the war was over.” I have said this many times, possibly previously in this same book. As we used those rifles for nearly two years, it is my opinion that it just never did happen, and that all these accounts told throughout the United States regarding the likelihood of such a happening have been based upon one or two isolated instances – possibly due to a wrongly assembled bolt or reloaded ammunition.
Well, let’s skip along. We made our own fun when and where we could. On the second day of June, 1916, the machine-gun section, having just completed an arduous tour of duty in reinforcing the lower stories of the buildings in the town of Dickebusch, was engaged in a little “field day” of its own. We had drawn for our quarters the best building in town (it had been a bank) and had thoroughly reinforced it with sand-bags and, here and there, a layer of railroad iron, so we felt pretty safe. George Paudash and I had started a game of “duck on the rock” in the public square, which was immediately behind our quarters, when Heinie started shelling us. He was using those eight-inch rifles – the ones that shoot so straight and with such a low trajectory that you never have a chance to dodge. He was looking for a big 15-inch howitzer which was mounted on a railroad car and was, at that moment, operating from a position just about one hundred yards behind our position. The first two or three shells were short and one of them killed a lot of men of the Nineteenth Battalion which was located just across the street from us. Then a few shells dropped into our “dooryard” and scared most of the recruits into their holes. George and I, however, wise in such affairs, kept on with our game and soon others of the section came out and joined us. We knew from past experience that it was useless to try to dodge those fellows. If one happened to light where you were, it was going to get you. Those shells, evidently from naval guns, had delay-action fuses and there was never a dugout or other place in our line that offered the slightest protection from them. We carried on with the game and, as I said, others came out and joined us and we were right in the midst of it when the word came to pack up and move up North.
That was the day of the great surprise attack on the “Pats” and the Mounted Rifles – June 2, 1916. Heinie slipped one over on the Third Division and simply blasted these two battalions out of their position, which extended from about the village of Hooge, south to Hill Sixty. For the short time it lasted it was about as hot a fight as was ever pulled off. The Germans succeeded in penetrating our lines to a distance of some seven hundred yards and almost annihilated the two organizations mentioned. It was the second time for the “Pats,” as they had been almost cleaned out on a previous occasion. Both out
fits put up gallant fights but were simply overwhelmed, first by a tremendous concentration of artillery fire and then by a powerful infantry attack.
We did not get into it until that night and then only as supports – just to hold on at our G.H.Q. line, where the attack was stopped. There was little opportunity for any real rifle work. Those of the infantry who were engaged did all their fighting at such short range that a shotgun would have been better than a rifle, anyway. When you get down to that kind of fighting, it don’t make any difference what kind of a weapon you have – if you have guts. And, let me tell you, it takes just that (or those – which is it?) to stand the gaff when it comes to the real show-down.
To regain the ground lost on June 2nd, required a little time. We went in, opposite Hill Sixty and The Ravine, and got well established, while the Higher Command was mobilizing enough new batteries to insure against a recurrence of the St. Eloi affair. One thousand guns against one thousand yards of enemy trench was what they prescribed – and a lot of those guns were of twelve and fifteen inch calibre. Say, didn’t they give Heinie a dose of his own medicine? For long, weary months we had been looking and praying for just that and I want to say that that fight (in which I participated as a sergeant, although I had been commissioned a first lieutenant several weeks before but had not yet found it out) was the most enjoyable I ever attended.
Wow, when all those guns opened, our guns, mind you, it was like music to our ears. So long had we endured the overwhelming weight of German metal. Now, for the first time, we had the best of them in that respect. It was a lark – even though we were still receiving all that the enemy had, and suffered severe casualties, just the knowledge that we had them out-gunned, seemed to put everybody on edge.
A Rifleman Went to War Page 22