by Mark Zuehlke
By this time the battalions were marching across open country with their objectives visible in the distance. The Germans were sending up massive volleys of Very lights, “orange, red and green,” so that the low ground before the slopes of Hill 60 and Observatory Ridge was clearly illuminated. Both sides had artillery firing continuously, the sounds of guns echoing back from the hills. Hearing the ground in front of Observatory Ridge was free of enemy, Tuxford ordered the leading 14th and 15th Battalions to assemble at the ridge’s westerly foot just in front of Zillebeke and facing a cluster of houses called Valley Cottages that lined the road running up the ridge. The 14th was on the left, the 15th on the right with the 16th close behind it in support. The Canadian Scottish slipped a little to the south of where the 48th Highlanders were forming and found shelter in some old trenches dug behind a hedge near a main communication trench called Fosse Way. Off to the left, the Royal Highlanders of Canada had set up about 200 yards farther back behind a copse of trees between Fosse Way and Zillebeke Lake.
Six green rockets fired from 3rd Division’s advanced headquarters were to signal Zero Hour at 0230 on June 3.24 Impatiently Tuxford watched as first his second hand and then minute hand ticked past the appointed hour. It was a miserable night, a cold heavy rain falling. The troops stood or sat in the open, growing colder and wetter with every passing minute. Soon Tuxford looked away from his watch. Minutes turned to hours with still no signal. At 0445 Tuxford assured 3rd Division his brigade was ready to go, but there was no reply. 25 Finally word came that the 7th Battalion from 2nd Brigade and the 49th Battalion of 3rd Division’s 7th Brigade were still on the march. The attack had to wait on their arrival. Dawn came and, with it, instructions that the attack would begin at 0700.26
A twenty-minute bombardment that Tuxford thought “exceptionally weak” preceded the attack. Ten minutes after the shellfire ceased the rockets shot skyward. Urquhart wondered if they really were the rockets, for they just looked like “puffs of smoke in the sky. There was a pause of doubt. Then the two attacking battalions after a short interval moved off.”27 The officers of the 7th and 49th Battalions never saw the rockets at all. They held their troops where they were and watched as the two 3rd Brigade battalions advanced out of the centre of the Canadian line toward Hill 61 and Tor Top “with the greatest coolness” and straight into a hailstorm of artillery, mortar, and machine-gun fire. Had the four battalions gone forward as one the fire could not have been so concentrated, but due to the uneven start the Germans saturated the Montreal and Toronto troops with fire and then meted out the same punishment in turn against each of the other two leading battalions as they lurched forward at different times.28
The Royal Montreal Regiment excelled this day, advancing into the withering fire at a steady pace that kept it right in line with the 48th Highlanders. Both battalions disappeared from view, swallowed by the gunsmoke cloaking the battleground. Two hours passed before a runner came back with word that they had advanced 2,000 yards, going through Valley Cottages and on to Rudkin House. This put them within 1,000 yards of the forward trenches. But the runner said they could advance no further because of the intensity of artillery fire. Instead they were digging in and would hold despite the fire, their heavy losses, and being subjected to enfilading fire from Hill 60 and The Snout. The 7th Battalion, meanwhile, had been blocked in front of a heavily manned trench in Armagh Wood while the 49th Battalion fared better, gaining a section of trenches almost on its objective.29 All four battalions were badly disorganized and some men, in each case, unaware the attack had stalled out, had continued on to the final objectives only to be killed or taken prisoner.
Urquhart was out in the smoke trying to precisely locate the two 3rd Brigade battalions. Finally he located the Montrealers and was led to Major A. T. Powell. Although wounded, the major said he was in command and that all the other senior officers had been killed or injured. The battalion was digging in and badly cut up.30 Once the forward line appeared stabilized, Powell passed command to Lt. R. A. Pelletier and was taken to the rear for treatment. Pelletier would be twice “blown up,” with one blast knocking him unconscious for a while. But he refused to relinquish command until the battalion was relieved.31
Once assured the Royal Montreal Regiment’s position was as secure as it could be, Urquhart had set off southward along a trench running through a small wood of shattered maples appropriately named Maple Copse to find the 48th Highlanders. He soon found things “in a bad state there. … Many wounded and dead in terribly mangled conditions.” At the battalion’s headquarters dugout he learned “they were badly hit, losing a number of officers.”
Returning to brigade headquarters, Urquhart advised Tuxford that neither battalion was close to its final objectives. Nobody knew for sure, but in both cases some isolated groups might have got through and would now be cut off. Supporting this theory was the fact that each battalion was missing a number of full platoons. Urquhart warned that any attempt to renew the advance beyond where the forward battalions were dug in would entail crossing wide-open ground, dominated by heavy fire from commanding positions. Tuxford realized that he would have to wait until nightfall before passing his two support battalions through. But the question was whether the attempt should be made at all.32
The Canadian Scottish and Royal Highlanders, meanwhile, had spent most of the day being hammered mercilessly by German artillery. Men died or were wounded while huddling in shallow, muddy holes. At dusk, it was decided that continuing the attack was fruitless and the two support battalions were set to work digging a defensive trench with orders to meet the expected renewal of the German offensive where they stood. Casualties continued to mount as the shellfire never relented and, by dawn, the survivors were exhausted from a terrifying night spent carving some semblance of a trench out of the mud-soaked earth.
Tuxford had been busy, too, securing more men by having 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade’s 2nd Battalion placed under his command. He planned that these fresh troops would relieve the Montreal and Toronto battalions while his other two battalions put in a renewed counterattack. But it was not to be. For the next seventy-two hours both sides pounded the other with artillery, but neither advanced. Each day, Tuxford received orders to prepare to send the Canadian Scottish forward only to subsequently receive a postponement. On June 7, Currie informed him that the attack “would now definitely be temporarily postponed.” The brigade was replaced by battalions from 2nd Division’s 5th Brigade and moved to billets in the rear. Their rest was to be short; the battalion commanders warned that 1st Division was teeing up a better-planned attack.33
Standing in support had taken an unusually heavy toll on the Canadian Scottish for such duty. Three officers had been killed and one wounded. Twelve other ranks had died, another seventy-nine been wounded, and eight reported missing. But the two attacking battalions had suffered far higher losses. The Royal Montreal Regiment reported two officers dead, fifteen wounded, and one missing. Among the Montrealers’ other ranks 42 were killed, 207 wounded, and 129 missing and presumed taken prisoner. Three 48th Highlander officers had been slain and nine wounded. The Toronto regiment’s other ranks lost 21 dead while another 175 other ranks fell wounded. A further seventy-seven men were missing.34
Tuxford later wrote, “This action did not recover the lost trenches, it resulted in consolidating an advanced line connecting the 3rd Division in a due southerly direction via RUDKIN HOUSE, with the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Division. This ground was entirely wide open to the enemy at the time of the advance, which also denied OBSERVATORY RIDGE to the enemy.” But the Germans still held valuable ground just two miles from Ypres that posed a constant threat to the entire salient. Field Marshal Haig ordered them expelled, but—because of his plans in the Somme—offered Canadian Corps nothing more than supporting artillery and one British infantry brigade. Perhaps, he said, the attack could be made with less infantry if they were sufficiently supported by more gunnery. Accordingly the artillery consisted of the grea
test number of guns the British had ever concentrated on such a narrow front—218 in all. These guns were soon arrayed and pounding both the German incursion zone and its support lines. The Germans reported that casualties among the 26th Infantry Division and 120th Regiment, which held most of the disputed ground, “mounted in horrifying numbers.”35
Trained as an artilleryman, Currie carefully monitored the gun plan and added a twist of his own. At his insistence, a four-day bombardment began pounding the German lines on June 9 at intervals of twenty to thirty minutes. Each time the guns lifted, the Germans, who had taken shelter in dugouts back from their forward trenches to escape the torrent of shells, would tumble forward to man their positions only to be caught in the renewed shelling. Their losses mounted and yet no Canadian infantry came at them.
Currie would do the same thing on June 13, but this time put in the attack. With his battalions all badly depleted, Currie regrouped them into two composite brigades. On the right, 1st Brigade’s Brig. Louis Lipsett would attack with 1st, 3rd, 7th, and 8th Battalions, while on the left Brig. Tuxford would head for Hill 61 and Tor Top with the 2nd, 4th, 13th, and 16th Battalions. Lipsett would have just one battalion out front—the 3rd—while Tuxford placed his trust in the battalions of his brigade—the 13th and 16th. On the far left, the 9th Brigade’s 58th Battalion would also join 1st Division’s assault. This time, there would be no confusion about objective locations. Currie had acquired accurate aerial photographs of the enemy’s lines and codenamed each trench with the name of a Canadian city. The front of the German line was Halifax, the next line Montreal, the following one Winnipeg with the final objective—the Canadian front line of June 2—dubbed Vancouver. In 3rd Brigade’s case, Vancouver included both summits of Hill 61 and Tor Top.36
On the night of June 11-12, the infantry moved through heavy rain to their forming-up positions. The Canadian Scottish returned to the Fosse Way trenches, now partially flooded, that they had occupied the previous week. Here they passed “a wet, cheerless day, a steady, misty drizzle soaking the clothing of the troops who, during those hours, lay in the open.” A prisoner brought in boasted that the Germans expected a counterattack, news that little raised the men’s spirits. Another worry was that the ground was a quagmire. An intelligence report declared the “shell holes deep and wide, filled with water. The fallen trees in Armagh and Sanctuary Woods form serious obstacles to the advance of heavily laden troops.”37
Stuck in the open and enduring a day of misery ensured the men were all tired before they even began, but there had been no choice in the matter. The only bright news anyone could give Lt.-Col. Jack Leckie was that an old trench ran parallel at a hundred yards’ distance from the German positions at Halifax. This would serve as a good assembly point for a quick dash into the German front line while still being far enough back to not fall within the artillery’s kill zone. Leckie decided to put the platoons of the leading wave into the trench and then position his second wave in shell holes about 50 yards farther back. The third and fourth waves would remain at Fosse Way. It was a risky plan because of the likelihood of discovery while moving so close to the German front, but Leckie hoped the stormy night would conceal the first wave.
Nos. 1 and 2 Companies under Captains Stanley Wood and Roderick Bell-Irving respectively would lead with two platoons forward and two in support. They would attack in two waves, each consisting of two lines spread out in extended order. Two bomber sections numbering twenty men would be on the left and right flanks. The line of advance would take the Canadian Scottish across the front slope of Observatory Ridge, into the hollow of shattered Armagh Wood, and on to the final objective.
Wood and Bell-Irving led their men off at 2200 hours on June 12. Because of the need for stealth and the slow progress over badly torn ground, it took three hours for them to cover 1,000 yards and gain the old trench line and shell holes.38 But they arrived undetected and still had thirty minutes to prepare for the 0130 attack, which would go in the moment the ten-hour-long artillery bombardment lifted for the final time. But forty-five minutes before the guns ceased, the tempo of shelling suddenly surged to a terrific crescendo. When the guns stopped, with ears still ringing, the Canadians went over the top, advancing through a dense smokescreen and lashing rain that reduced visibility to mere feet.39
Each Can Scot carried a rifle with fixed bayonet and 270 rounds of ammunition, two grenades, one iron ration, a full water bottle, and three empty sandbags that would be used to create a defensive parapet at the objective. Every third man also carried a shovel. Behind the two infantry waves followed consolidating parties consisting of one hundred engineers and pioneers, seventy-five men tasked with carrying support materiel, and twenty-five wire-laying signallers. These men had a shovel for every second man while the tenth man in a section was loaded down with a pick, an axe, and bags of nails. One man in each party had a cross-cut saw for cutting trees, branches, or available lumber into usable lengths for parapet construction. The officers in the front ranks carried a multitude of flares—white to fire when Halifax fell, red when Vancouver was gained, and green to report that the attack was held up. Red flags would be raised on the flanks of the battalion at each objective.40
Right out on the front edge of their companies, Bell-Irving and Wood headed through a rain of German bullets that scythed men down on every side. Men lost their footing in the treacherous mud and, within seconds of going over the top, most were covered head to toe in gooey slime. Rifles and revolvers became clogged and rendered useless. 41 Between the start point and Halifax, Wood—the southern gentleman from America—was killed by a bullet through the heart. Two lieutenants, Charles Cecil Adams and Howard James McLaurin (the latter commanding the second wave No. 4 Company), were mortally wounded in the charge. McLaurin’s brother, Pte. Douglas C. McLaurin, had also served in the Canadian Scottish and been killed on April 5, 1916. On June 7, Lt. McLaurin had suffered an earlier wound but refused to go to hospital because the battalion was so shorthanded. If there was to be an attack, he had said, it was his “duty to stay with and lead his men in it.”42
Advancing with the riflemen for the first time were sections of men armed with the Lewis gun which, along with the Vickers, had replaced the Colt. One man could carry a Lewis, which weighed 26 pounds, and match pace with the infantry. It was still a heavy weapon to lug across No Man’s Land and the complicated firing mechanism offered an “astonishing variety of stoppages.”43 Because of the gun’s complexity and its rapid rate of fire, the gunner—designated No. 1—was supported by a crew of three to four men. The No. 2 man’s job was to reload the weapon while two or three others carried spare magazines in special canvas bags. Each round-pan magazine was loaded with forty-seven .303-calibre cartridges. Eager to prove their worth, the Lewis gunners suffered heavily. The crew of No. 1 gun was chopped down to two men even before it stepped out into No Man’s Land. Five times during the advance, other men pitched in to help operate the gun only to be killed, but the first two survivors made it all the way to Vancouver. No. 5’s gun crew all died.
Despite the heavy resistance, the leading companies gained Halifax, the bombers blasting the trench with one grenade after another. Their rifles rendered useless by the mud, most of the infantrymen also resorted to chucking the two grenades they carried at the enemy. Once the explosions ceased, the men plunged into the trench and went at the Germans with bayonets. At the sight of the approaching steel, the majority of the enemy either surrendered or took to their heels. Clearly the artillery had done its job. Many Germans seemed dazed and incoherent—wandering about with no rifles or other equipment. Entire sections of Halifax had been obliterated and bodies were strewn everywhere.
Bell-Irving had just fired the white flare declaring Halifax taken and was rallying the men for a charge on Montreal when a machine gun opened up from a nearby wood and men began to fall screaming. Flashes from “a black jumble of fallen trees” betrayed the gun’s location. Immediately a group of men rushed the position only to
be driven to ground by its deadly fire. Suddenly the attack began to falter. Seeing a clearing to the left of the position that could be crossed quickly, Bell-Irving dashed alone into it and came at the gun from the flank. His revolver had been jammed earlier by mud, but he had snatched a rifle with fixed bayonet from a casualty. Now he leapt over the machine gun’s parapet into the midst of the gun crew and in quick succession bayoneted three Germans. The fourth managed to grab Bell-Irving’s rifle, threatening to wrest it away from the tiring officer, when reinforcements arrived and someone shot the German down. Still clinging to the rifle, Bell-Irving stood panting over the corpse. Then he tossed the gun aside, scooped up a new rifle with fixed bayonet, and calmly led the battalion toward Montreal.
Nos. 1 and 2 Companies moved out in line, no longer strong enough to form two waves. Close behind were the other two companies. As they left Halifax, the artillery finished working over Montreal and lifted. It was so dark, finding the way without straying either to left or right was almost impossible. They clambered over tangles of dead and wounded, shattered trees the artillery had felled as cleanly as an axe, slipping in the oily mud, tripping over webs of branches and stumps. Rifles still jammed, they threw grenades at any German position encountered. It was a dangerous practice as in the blackness they could easily grenade their comrades. More than a few men were wounded by shrapnel from a grenade thrown by a nearby friend. Montreal fell easily and the battalion paused to reorganize with all four companies now strung into one ever-shrinking line.