by Mark Zuehlke
A couple of men discovered among the scattered equipment a pack covered in blood that had “Denholm” marked on it, and the insignia of the Royal Scots regiment. Knowing that the brother of their sergeant, Alexander Denholm, served in that British regiment, Denholm’s comrades carefully steered him past the spot so he would not be left worrying about his sibling’s fate. Later it was learned that the Denholm brother had been evacuated to England where he was recovering from wounds.11
From Festubert, Urquhart looked toward the German wire and defences and saw more British dead lying thick on the ground, “as if mown down by a scythe; the occasional man had fallen against the wire in the kneeling position, ready for the final spring which death had denied him. And there were more hanging over the ditches, half in, half out, killed as they attempted to cross; or in the open, in all sorts of contorted attitudes. Burial parties were making little headway, and in the muggy, wet morning the many corpses lying on the sodden, red-stained earth, gave forth a sweet, pungent odour which was almost overpowering.”12
The scene was utterly dispiriting. “Add to this the fact of it being a wet morning, tired feeling and [it] will be understood how terrible our sensations were. No. 4 Company’s casualties for this attempt 44.” The company had lost almost a quarter of its strength in an action where not a man fired a shot or even got close to the enemy. Adding to the misery their packs had been rifled where they had been dropped during the night march. Urquhart had everything stolen but a blanket. Finally, back in a trench at Indian Village, they bedded down with what gear remained. “Tried to sleep but too cold and wet,” Urquhart scrawled in his diary.13
In preparation for the planned attack, Lt.-Col. Leckie established a battle headquarters in a trench in front of Festubert and from here a telephone line was strung along the communication trench to the forward companies. Hoping to gain some appreciation of the lay of the land and German defences around the orchard, two patrols were sent toward the orchard after nightfall on May 19. One patrol crept eastward along a trench that cut through a marsh close to La Quinque rue to a shattered house that proved empty. Lying less than 100 yards from the orchard’s southwest corner, Leckie decided the house provided perfect cover and stationed two Colt machine-gun teams in it before dawn so they could protect the attack’s left flank.
May 20 dawned warm and sunny. An uneasy quiet pervaded, as if each side waited for the other to renew the violence. Leckie spent the morning drafting and submitting a detailed plan of attack that he proposed initiating at 2215 hours. Brig. Turner quickly approved Leckie’s proposal, but a short time later divisional command said the attack was off altogether.
Moments after learning this news, Leckie’s headquarters was bracketed by a heavy German bombardment that began pounding Festubert at noon, but escaped damage. The telephone wire to the forward companies, however, was knocked out. Despite the heavy fire still lashing the communication trench, L/Cpl. Duncan Stewart and Pte. George Hardwick crawled along it and fixed all the broken sections.
After about four hours, the German artillery finally lifted and a runner reported to Leckie with instructions for him to meet Turner at Indian Village at 1530 hours. When Leckie arrived the brigadier said the Canadian Scottish would attack the orchard with a single company while on their flank the 48th Highlanders would also be advancing. The assault was to go in at 1945.
Leckie protested because the attack would be in broad daylight with one company advancing over exposed ground against a heavily entrenched enemy. Why not go in after nightfall? Turner agreed that would be preferable, but it was also true that after the failed night attack at Aubers Ridge the British high command considered that the ability to control troop movement during daylight outweighed the disadvantages of exposing them to more accurate fire. Turner said the orders were there and they must comply.
With Zero Hour less than four hours away, Leckie raced back to Festubert and summoned Captain William Rae. Despite the fact the officer was still exhausted from the failed earlier attack, Leckie handed him command of the new assault because neither Major Cyrus Peck nor Captain Frank Morison, who respectively commanded No. 1 and No. 3 companies, had combat experience. Normally overall command of the assault would have fallen to the battalion second-in-command, Major Jack Leckie, but he was away on ninety-six hours’ leave. Leckie never doubted that Rae was up to the task, for following the officer’s performance during the attack on the woods in the Ypres Salient he had promoted him to major. But the promotion had yet to be approved at higher levels—a frustration for Leckie that led him to alternatively refer to Rae in the Canadian Scottish war diary by either rank.
The attack, Leckie told Rae, would be delivered by No. 3 Company with Peck’s No. 1 Company supporting it by covering a communication trench that ran directly north from the battalion’s forward line to the orchard. If No. 3 Company succeeded, Peck would then advance to where the trench entered the orchard and hook hard right from there to clear a fortified house designated as M10 on the maps.14
Since the two companies had taken up their forward positions they had been engaged in a fruitless effort to dig a defensive trench in the open ground between La Quinque rue and the communication trench No. 4 Company had tried following earlier to gain the orchard. Just two feet below the surface, the shovels cut into muck and water quickly filled the shallow trench to the brim. Only on the right flank where their front abutted the communication trench’s meandering course was the semblance of a trench possible. On the left, meanwhile, their flank mired in a marsh that was so deep with mud that a gap existed between them and the Coldstream Guards stationed on its opposite side.
In the late afternoon, Rae set up an advanced battalion headquarters in a house on the south side of La Quinque rue about 150 yards behind the Canadian Scottish front line and summoned Morison and Peck. Already the operation was lurching into motion. As the two officers walked in, a short artillery bombardment began softening up the orchard. Rae conducted a hurried briefing and then sent them back to their companies. They had just minutes to form up their men in a long, strung-out line before the guns lifted and the Canadian Scottish began walking forward. Each man was spaced two paces apart. There was no cover. They simply walked stiffly into the face of a storm of machine-gun and rifle fire that one man later described as being “like sleet.” Another saw a terrified rabbit scurry past and shouted, “Oh, look at the bunny! Look at the bunny, will you!”
There was no covering fire from the two Colt machine-gun teams stationed by Leckie in the house. They got off just one burst before German artillery zeroed in and obliterated the place. Both guns were destroyed and their crews either killed or wounded.15
No. 3 Company’s left platoon, under Lt. Espine Montgomery Pickton-Ward, wandered lost through the marsh and out in front of the Coldstream Guards. The British troops started shouting directions, but Pickton-Ward was struck dead before he could re-organize his command.16 Sgt. John Cochrane calmly took over, received some directional advice from a Coldstream officer, and then ordered his men to come about sharply ninety degrees. As the advance was renewed, he moved along the line dressing it back into a smart parade-ground formation despite heavy enemy fire. Cochrane was shot five times, but never faltered until the orchard was gained. Only then did he let the stretcher-bearers carry him away, but upon reaching headquarters he slid off the stretcher and personally reported to Rae.
The other platoons in Morison’s company gained the road opposite the orchard only to find a deep ditch bordered by a hedge that was impassable except for a couple of narrow gaps. As Morison was about to run through one of these, a bomber yanked him back. “Bombers go in front of officers, Sir,” he barked, jumped the ditch, and ducked through the gap with the rifle platoons following hot on his heels in single file. Charging through these two gaps, the company quickly overran the orchard and swept it clear of the few Germans stationed there. At the orchard’s southern edge, Morison ordered the men to dig in behind another hedge. Fifty yards beyond, a fa
cing trench was held by the Germans, who could be heard shouting excitedly back and forth in surprise over the loss of the orchard.
The battalion’s first objective gained, Major Peck’s No. 1 Company began the drive toward the fortified house south of the orchard. Barring their advance was a German parapet, but the two leading platoons found a narrow gap and dashed through. “Immediately these men cleared the gap, several machine guns opened fire on them, and they were at the mercy of the enemy. The garden round the house was covered with a network of barbed wire, and between the breastwork and the house was open ground. A number of the men were killed as they cleared the breastwork and as many more in an attempt to storm the wire. A few of the latter group shammed death and lay in front of the wire until darkness fell, hoping they might then get into the house, but as the attack of the 15th Canadian Battalion … had been unsuccessful, they finally withdrew, without attempting to get into the objective.” Seeing the fate that had befallen the two leading platoons, the rest of the company remained behind the breastwork. In the opening mêlée, Major Peck had been wounded and evacuated. No further attempt was made to take the house. In capturing the orchard, the Canadian Scottish achieved the deepest penetration of the German line by British First Army during the Battle of Festubert. Canadian Orchard would remain in Allied hands until the great German offensive of April 1918.17
At 0200 hours on May 21, the 13th Battalion (Royal Highlanders of Canada) began relieving the two Canadian Scottish companies and, at dawn, they marched to Indian Village. Here the rest of the battalion had listened anxiously through the night to the fierce fight. When the two companies marched in, Urquhart was shocked at how cut up they were, “No. 3 only having 56 men left and No. 1 [Company] about 85.” Captain Don Moore, Pickton-Ward, and Lt. Gordon MacKenzie were dead. Peck, Lt. Arthur Morton, and Lt. Andrew Gray wounded. “The fellows seemed all done but the work accomplished was immense.” Urquhart was saddened by how Pickton-Ward met his fate. “Poor Ward,” he wrote. “Body was buried by Coldstreams.” The battalion quartermaster knew what was needed and Urquhart heartily agreed. “Gave a good dose of rum to men and then they had a sleep. It was a terrible strain on them. You could see they were simply done.”18
In less than two weeks since the slaughter at Ypres, the battalion had again been shredded. Three officers dead, another three wounded. Sixty-eight men killed and 203 wounded for a casualty toll of 277.19 The Canadian Scottish moved immediately to new duties, alternately standing in reserve in the area of Essars or putting in trench duty east of Givenchylez-la-Bassée. Here they remained while the spring of 1915 gave way to a hot summer. Although the trenches were by no means safe and each deployment to the front yielded casualties, the passing weeks gave opportunity for the battalion to slowly nurse its wounds and heal again.
The 16th Battalion was far from alone in the heavy casualties suffered for no gain during the Festubert offensive. Over the course of five separate assaults on as many days 1st Canadian Division had advanced a mere 600 yards at a cost of 2,468 casualties. This, so close on the heels of its losing half its fighting strength at Ypres, created a reinforcement crisis.20
The only good the Canadian Scottish could see in the results of the fighting of early 1915 was one welcome casualty of war. On June 13, Canadian Headquarters ordered the Ross rifle withdrawn from active service and replaced it with the Lee-Enfield that was the standard rifle of all Commonwealth forces except the Canadians. The Can Scots, Urquhart noted, had “found this weapon quite unsuitable … in the field, and many … during the Ypres and Festubert battles, discarded it for the Lee-Enfield. It jammed from heat expansion after the firing of twenty or thirty rounds. Men were to be seen stamping on the bolt in an attempt to open it, cursing bitterly with tears of rage in their eyes, and, finally, when all efforts to draw it had failed, flinging the rifle away.”21
A couple of weeks later another issue of new kit arrived that soon sparked the Battle of the Kilts. Although the decision had been made to supplant the four regimental tartans with one of khaki, it had taken some time for these to be manufactured. When they arrived, it was immediately evident their manufacturer knew nothing of kilts. Depending on whether a man was small or large, the kilts might wrap twice around and drag on boot tops or barely cover his loins. “Lemonade rags,” the men called them.
To a man the Gordons of No. 1 Company refused to wear them, declaring that they “wished to retain their tartan.” Leckie responded by placing some of the company’s sergeants under arrest. Then Regimental Sergeant Major David Nelson objected to the kilt as an “outrage” and was also arrested. Finally the khaki issue was withdrawn for modification and the men continued wearing their varying tartans. This resulted in the battalion being garbed in an erratic assortment of clothing as reinforcements arrived, with or without regimental Highland kit, and attempts were made to jury-rig appropriate clothes on the spot or secure them from regimental aid groups back in Canada.22 After one late June parade before Col. Turner, Leckie noted with some despair that, although the parade had gone well, “the diversity of uniforms had a jarring effect!”23
Eventually the matter would be resolved with the battalion agreeing to wear the Mackenzie tartan, although a khaki kilt finally became available that proved suitably constructed. Over time the khaki kilt was commonly used by the Highland troops when not on parade. By that time, however, the Canadian Scottish would have gone through several bloody battles that inflicted such losses that the continued identification of the four companies by regimental affiliation had been rendered moot as men sent to fill the ranks were being drawn at random from reinforcement pools.
chapter five
Trench Warfare Drudgery
- JUNE 1915-MARCH 1916 -
On June 24, 1st Canadian Infantry Division moved about 16 miles from Festubert to the Ploegsteert sector, coming again under British Second Army command and being assigned to Lt.-Gen. Sir W. P. Pulteney’s III Corps. The division was assigned a 4,400-yard front between Messines and Ploegsteert, where it would remain for three months of comparative quiet.
The bloodletting of the first five months of 1915 had left both the Allied and German armies so depleted that an uneasy stalemate descended on the Western Front. With Germany removing troops to reinforce the Eastern Front, the British high command felt confident that no major enemy offensives would be forthcoming. This ensured time to strengthen forward defences and rebuild the British Expeditionary Force with little German interference.
Rebuilding proved more troublesome for the Canadian division than was true of its other Commonwealth counterparts due to manpower supply shortages. Minister of Militia and Defence Sam Hughes had neglected to create an efficient system for raising and training reinforcements to replenish the contingent he had so erratically formed in the fall of 1914. The heavy losses of April and May had completely drained the division’s entire reserve pool in England, which had only numbered 2,000 men. This forced the dissolution of entire battalions stationed in England as part of the Canadian buildup there that were then fed piecemeal to the division. Even this measure failed to provide enough troops to bring the line battalions up to strength.
Consequently, the Canadian Scottish—like most other battalions—had only half their assigned complement at the beginning of July and Lt.-Col. Robert Leckie decided three larger companies would be more useful than four that were greatly reduced. Amalgamating Nos. 1 and 3 Companies under Captain Frank Morison’s command also helped account for a grave shortage of officers, with each company still only assigned one or two apiece. The manpower shortfalls did not mean any lessening in divisional expectations. Each battalion remained responsible for the same trench frontage it would normally be expected to man, which left officers and men trying to fill the shoes of two people. Morale plummeted.1
Fortunately, the Ploegsteert line was “a real rest front” where Germans and Allies maintained an unofficial quasi-truce. Rarely did either side fire artillery or machine guns. But even a so-called rest front
remained deadly for the unwary or merely unlucky. Snipers plied their trade, targeting exposed positions or crossing points in the facing breastworks. Both sides vigorously patrolled No Man’s Land, seeking prisoners or ambushing enemy patrols. Twenty-nine-year-old Lt. Wallace Chambers, the battalion’s machine-gun officer, was fatally shot while on a July 6 reconnaissance in No Man’s Land.
Stalking snipers and roving German patrols in the darkness of No Man’s Land unsettled reinforcements and made even veterans trigger happy. This led to several incidents where men forgot to challenge troops coming through the wire into the trenches from No Man’s Land for the password and shooting first. One officer died bringing a patrol in when the party deployed in the trench specifically to cover its return opened fire from a range of just 10 yards. When another patrol slipped out of the pre-dawn darkness into a trench where Pte. Jules Mondoux was digging a trench with his back turned, the notoriously jumpy veteran spun and struck the lead soldier in the head with the flat of his shovel. Paraded to Company Headquarters, Mondoux said: “I don’t know why—I am sorry—but it is my nature.” Thereafter, returning patrols approached cautiously to within calling distance and entered only once assured it was safe to do so. Lt. Hugh Urquhart believed these incidents proved that almost everyone had, in the parlance of the trenches, their “wind up,” or “in ordinary language … were nervous and excitable.”2