by Mark Zuehlke
chapter four
Blown to Hell
- MAY 14-JUNE 13, 1915 -
During the eight months preceding the Second Battle of Ypres, the Canadian Scottish had overcome their initial distrust of those who wore different tartans or spoke with accents betraying differing roots or class backgrounds to become something akin to a family. Before that deadly charge on the night of April 22-23, casualties had been few and the Can Scots had often acted like older brothers to the replacements by helping hone their survival skills and teach them the tricks of trench life. By May 9, when Lt.-Gen. Edwin Alderson addressed the battalion by reading messages from all parts of the Empire that praised the stand the division had made at Ypres, the veterans stood among an equal number of strangers, and it was the distant rumble of artillery most of them heard more keenly than Alderson’s voice. Out there in the distance somewhere men died and that “gave a warning of the chances of the future, which distracted their attention from listening to the praise of what had been done in the past.”1
On the evening of May 14, as 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade marched out of the salient, the survivors of Ypres kept a wary distance from the replacements. Most of these had joined the battalion on April 28, arriving from England as part of what was known as the Prince Rupert Company. Raised and commanded by Cyrus Wesley Peck, a forty-four-year-old businessman from the British Columbia coastal town, the company numbered 225 men. With a stout, egg-shaped body, and a thick, full moustache, Peck lumbered walrus-like about rather than strode, suffered asthma, and hardly looked a soldier. While Lt.-Col. Robert Leckie gave him command of No. 1 Company, he distributed the Prince Rupert men throughout the rest of the battalion. Leckie did the same with a 213-strong draft of reinforcements raised and sent overseas by the 50th Gordon Highlanders in Victoria when it arrived on May 7.
Not all the reinforcements sent to the battalion were newcomers. A small number drawn from the battalion’s base camp in England had been brought over by the popular Seaforth lieutenant Roderick Ogle Bell-Irving. This contingent included nine other lieutenants, who were a welcome addition because many platoons had fallen under the command of sergeants or even corporals when their officers had been killed or wounded. The son of a prominent Vancouver merchant and benefactor of the city’s Seaforth Highlanders, the twenty-four-year-old Bell-Irving had quit a clerking job when war was declared and quickly been posted as a Seaforth lieutenant. To his dismay, the young officer had been designated surplus and left at the training depot in England when the battalion moved to France. Bell-Irving had vowed that nothing would keep him from seeing front-line service now that he was back in the Canadian Scottish fold.
Just before midnight the Canadian Scottish reached their billets near Merville where the First British Army’s reserve camp behind the Festubert lines was situated. Reporting to 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade headquarters, Leckie learned that an attack was likely within twenty-four hours to support the French Tenth Army’s staggering offensive in the area of the Artois Plateau between Lens and Arras.
The Artois Plateau sloped into the Douai Plain between these two communities, and here the German Sixth Army held a seven-mile-wide and four-mile-deep salient not unlike the Allied one at Ypres. Vimy Ridge, which formed a hard barrier cutting across five miles of the salient’s tip, had been the primary objective of a French attack by three divisions launched on May 8. Although successful in breaking the German forward defences for a two-and-a-half-mile gain that almost won Vimy Ridge, the assault had been halted at the last minute when enemy reinforcements arrived before reserves could come forward from a holding position seven miles to the French rear. A slugging match ensued that a week later had inflicted 100,000 French and 75,000 German casualties.
First British Army had initially supported the French effort with a two-pronged offensive in the Neuve Chapelle area where its right flank adjoined Tenth Army’s. This attack, later called the Battle of Aubers Ridge, had failed to gain ground. The French insisted the British either try again or extend their lines to free a Tenth Army division for redeployment on the Vimy Ridge front. Not wanting to have to attack according to a French schedule that he considered too rushed, General Sir John French ordered 1st British Division to take over 5,500 yards held by the French 58th Division on May 15.
But the British general also intended to support the French by striking near Festubert across a 5,000-yard frontage west of Givenchy-lez-la-Bassée. The B.E.F. commanders decided to attack here primarily because the Neuve Chapelle area had been the focus of British operations for months before. Immediately north of the designated area lay Aubers Ridge, where the May 9 assault had gone awry. Responding to the repeated British operations here, the Germans had heavily fortified their lines so that barbed wire was arrayed in 50-foot-deep belts and a carefully integrated and overlapping system of machine-gun posts ensured every square inch of wire fell within a killing zone. The Germans had also dug deeper trenches than any Allied forces and turned some sections into bunkers with good overhead protection from artillery bombardment. With two to three mutually supportive trench lines, they were ready to defend in depth—a strategy recently picked up from the French and much improved upon.
First Army’s Gen. Douglas Haig well knew of the German preparations, but had conceived a new tactic for overcoming them. Haig acknowledged the “defences in our front are so carefully and so strongly made, and mutual support with machine-guns is so complete, that in order to demolish them a long methodical bombardment will be necessary by heavy artillery (guns and howitzers) before Infantry are sent forward to the attack.” Haig wanted to deploy 60-pounders and 15-inch siege howitzers with careful observation of every shot to ensure that the German strongpoints were fully destroyed before committing the infantry. While this methodical process would be a long one, Haig believed that such “a deliberate and persistent attack” would cause the enemy to “be gradually and relentlessly worn down by exhaustion and loss until his defence collapses.”2
French was little impressed by Haig’s idea. While he doubted surprise could possibly be achieved in the Neuve Chapelle area, a prolonged and surgically directed bombardment would guarantee the Germans were ready and waiting. But, hoping the sheer volume of artillery would batter the Germans senseless for a brief time, French limited the offensive goal to a mere 1,000-yard penetration—roughly one-third of the distance the British sought in the original Aubers Ridge attack. French—and Haig agreed—no longer considered winning ground of much value. Victory, the British generals had decided, would be won by the side that inflicted greatest attrition on the other. Literally, the only way to win the war was to kill and maim so many enemy troops until Germany could no longer man the front in sufficient strength to prevent a general breakthrough.
Haig began bombarding a 5,000-yard stretch of front north of Festubert on May 13. With methodical precision, 443 powerful howitzers slowly and deliberately saturated the German front with each firing fifty rounds every twenty-four hours at the enemy parapets and support and communications trenches. Meanwhile, a far greater number of regular field guns concentrated on tearing gaps in the wire and spraying the infantry with shrapnel. For sixty hours the guns thundered, firing a total of more than 100,000 shells.
On the night of May 15-16, the British attack began with two divisions—the 2nd British and the Indian Meerut—advancing under cover of darkness. At daybreak they were joined by the 7th British Division, which had been judged too unfamiliar with the ground to carry out a night assault. Despite the prolonged bombardment, Haig’s hope that starting the offensive at night would catch the Germans off guard was partially realized.3
But after some initial gains the two British divisions proved unable to close a gap between them during the course of the day’s fighting and at nightfall the Germans broke contact, except in the area of Ferme de Bois, where they held on to a series of stout outposts, and withdrew to a new line about 500 yards behind La Quinque rue.
Believing the German withdrawal meant t
hey had been broken by the sustained bombardment, on the morning of May 17 Haig ordered his I Corps to establish a strong front astride La Quinque rue with the axis of advance directed southward toward La Bassée Canal. As the British divisions involved in the attack so far had come from this corps, Haig placed 3rd Canadian Infantry Brigade under I Corps command and assigned it as a reserve to the 7th British Division. All day long the British attacks were turned back by fierce German fire. That evening Haig ordered I Corps to try again in the morning and Brig.-Gen. Robert Turner was informed that his Canadians would lead the way.4
The moment Turner had received orders attaching his brigade to 7th Division, he had got the troops marching toward the front. Turner then hurried ahead to establish his headquarters in a farmhouse on the rue de l’Epinette, about a mile-and-a-half behind the British front line prior to the offensive’s start. By 0915 on May 17, the battalions were deployed in nearby assembly trenches and their commanders sitting down in the farmhouse for a conference. Turner warned they could be sent into action at any moment, but their immediate job was to move the battalions to a position astride the former British front line around a cluster of houses called Indian Village. No roads connected rue de l’Epinette and Indian Village, so the men would march cross-country. Although each battalion hurriedly dispatched a reconnaissance party to map out respective routes, by the time they returned the brigade had been stood down. Then, at 2000 hours, each battalion marched through steady drizzle about five miles back to new billets—which for the 16th Battalion was located in the village of Essars, near Béthune. It took two hours to complete the march and not until 0100 hours on May 18 were the last troops settled.
Most were sleeping soundly when new orders arrived at 0400 hours demanding the brigade return to Indian Village. The Canadian Scottish got underway at 0645, with the officers noting that their men were “dead tired after so much running about and not fit for much work. It seems a funny proposition taking us back so far for such little rest.”5 The battalions did not reach Indian Village until 1600 hours because of the need to march cross-country. Almost immediately Nos. 2 and 4 Companies were ordered to assemble in a nearby field. Captain William Rae still commanded No. 2 while Captain Victor Hastings, who had been promoted to captain only two months earlier, had taken over No. 4 after Major John Geddes’s death in the attack on the woods. In a quick huddle Lt.-Col. Robert Leckie told the two officers that No. 2 was to carry out a frontal attack alongside two companies of the Royal Montreal Regiment directed toward an orchard east of La Quinque rue. No. 4 Company would simultaneously “turnabout, make a detour through the village of Festubert, and move up la Quinque rue to the cover of the old British front line breastwork, where a British staff officer would be waiting. This officer would furnish further particulars of the advance, which in a general way was to proceed by way of a German breastwork communication trench, then to deploy, and attack the Orchard from the right simultaneously with the frontal attack. Both frontal and flank attacks were timed to converge on their objective at 5 p.m.”6
Such a complex scheme conducted at night was obviously fraught with difficulties. Not only did the companies in the frontal attack have to advance over ground crisscrossed by deep drainage ditches, but they also had to clamber over several abandoned British and German breastwork systems erected because the shallow water table had made trenching impossible. There was no time to reconnoitre the ground. The Canadians would have to hope that the topography matched their maps, which, due to a printing error, were upside down so that north was at the bottom rather than the top. In an attempt to provide navigation markers for setting out a line of advance the British cartographers had assigned features such as hedges, trench intersections, and buildings numbers, but the ground had been so churned up and torn by artillery fire that the map bore little resemblance to reality. The challenge Captain Rae faced in keeping No. 2 Company headed toward its objective and in line with the two Royal Montreal Regiment companies was minor compared to the trek required of Captain Hastings. To gain the orchard, No. 4 Company faced a route march of 5,000 yards. Somewhere out there, a staff officer supposedly waited to guide them to their start line, but Hastings had to rely on a soldier from the British Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders to lead him to this individual. If the staff officer could not be found, Hastings had no idea where the company’s start line was located.
Not surprisingly, the plan began unravelling from the outset. As the three companies began moving toward the objective in extended formation, the Germans zeroed in on the troops with heavy artillery fire. Most of the shells fell on the left and centre of the Montrealers, which caused them to begin shrinking to the right across the front of Rae’s advancing Can Scots. All three companies became hopelessly entangled and lost all cohesion, so that finally the officers just herded the soldiers into hodgepodge clusters and led them onward. Finally the attackers were forced to ground by the withering fire about 500 yards short of the orchard with men scattered on either side of la Quinque rue.
No. 4 Company, meanwhile, had come under intense artillery fire while passing through the ruins of Festubert. Breaking into small groups to dodge through the gauntlet of shells, the company had gained a breastwork where the British Highlander assured Hastings the staff officer should be waiting. But there was no sign of the man. Hastings consulted his map, but was unable to accurately fix his location in relation to the orchard or the German communication trench the company was supposed to follow to gain it. They would just have to push out into the open and hope to find the communication trench where he thought it might lie. Realizing that they had a lot of ground to cover the orchard and would have to move rapidly to reach it on schedule, Hastings ordered the company to dump their 60-pound packs where they stood and then led them out into the open.7
To his relief, the company quickly stumbled on the communication trench. This proved to be intermittently either a trench or raised parapet that provided less cover than hoped. Hastings told Lt. Hugh Urquhart to take point with the bomb throwers assigned to the company close behind and the rest of the men following by rifle platoons in file. “We were still heavily shelled,” Urquhart wrote later, “and the sights were pretty gruesome as many parts of parapet had been blown in, dead were lying round, their bodies terribly mangled. Found one part of trench blown in.” He paused here, because the bomb throwers were balking at going further. Deciding the only way to keep them going was to lead by example, Urquhart clambered over the collapsed trench and dashed forward. Coming around a turn in the trench, the lieutenant stumbled upon a Wiltshire Regiment machine-gun post. The officer there said his men held the most advanced section of the British line and asked what Urquhart was doing there. Only then did he realize the bombers were not behind him. Quickly he scribbled a note that read, “Canadians to come on,” and had one of the Wiltshires carry it back while he and the officer examined the map and confirmed that No. 4 Company was on track to reach the orchard. After a long wait the runner reappeared. “Canadians are all blown to Hell,” he said. “There is terrible murder up there.”8
Finally, three of the bombers appeared. Leaving two with the Wiltshires, Urquhart led the other on a reconnaissance toward a cluster of houses and trees he hoped might be the orchard. Only a few minutes out, the two stumbled upon a wounded Royal Montreal Regiment major, bleeding heavily through crudely applied bandages covering a multitude of wounds. Obviously dying, the major could only gasp that the frontal attack had failed. Ahead of him, Urquhart could now see dead and dying soldiers scattered inside and around the trench. Then an officer with strikingly fair hair came down the trench toward him and Urquhart recognized No. 2 Company’s Lt. Ross Cotton, who reported the frontal assault’s failure.
Urquhart headed back to confirm whether No. 4 Company had in fact been “blown to Hell” and soon found Hastings and what remained of his men coming slowly up the trench. When they reached the Wiltshire position, Hastings told the company to wait there while he and Cotton contacted either Cap
tain Rae or the Royal Montreal Regiment commander, Lt.-Col. W. W. Burland. Finding the two men together, Hastings reported his company’s situation. The three men agreed that the best the RMR and No. 2 Company could do was to stay in place while Hastings’s men extended in a line from the trench to tie in with their right flank. Hastings was just about to take his leave when a runner arrived with orders from brigade to immediately attack the orchard. Burland quickly scribbled a note objecting to the idea that he and Rae both signed.9
Eventually a new message arrived from brigade that left their note unacknowledged and reported that the other two Canadian Scottish companies would take over their advanced position at dawn while the Royal Montreal Regiment moved to a position to the left on the south side of La Quinque rue. This would anchor the Canadian Brigade’s left flank in with the 4th Guards Brigade of 2nd British Division. Meanwhile, to 3rd Brigade’s right, the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade would be deployed.
Once these dispositions were fully in place on May 20, the two fresh Canadian Scottish companies would seize what had now been dubbed Canadian Orchard. At the same time, 15th Battalion (48th Highlanders of Canada) would advance to rue d’Ouvert, about 250 yards to the east. Shortly after dawn on May 19, the two beaten-up Canadian Scottish companies withdrew via a system of badly damaged German trenches. “Sight of these trenches was very terrible,” Urquhart thought.10 “Although in after years some of those who were present then … witnessed many desolate battlefields … none surpassed in grimness the scene they saw that morning at Festubert. It is true that later in the war, especially at the Somme and Passchendaele, the artillery battered buildings, villages and the earth into an unrecognizable pulp, but the completeness of this mutilation often served to cover up the human side of the tragedy which, at Festubert, stood revealed in all its nakedness. Smashed rifles, torn, blood stained equipment and clothing were strewn over the battlefield. The dead, mainly British, lay thick around. They were scattered amongst the multi-coloured bags, black, blue, gray and white of the breastwork, thrown broadcast by the bombardment. One man stood in the trench, in an eerily life-like attitude, the hand up to the head where the fatal bomb fragment had pierced, as if listening for the movement of an oncoming enemy; some were locked in an embrace of death with a bayonet through one or other of the bodies.”