by Mark Zuehlke
The Canadian Scottish had formed up in trenches on the front during the night of August 13-14. No. 2 Company, under Major Edward Gilliat, would lead the attack on the right. Gilliat was a hardened veteran, who had been with the battalion since 1914. On his left was Lt. Bill Petrie’s No. 1 Company. Petrie had joined the Canadian Scottish in March 1916. Each company was to advance to Blue Line with two platoons forward and two following in another wave. Major James Murphy’s No. 4 Company with its four platoons formed line abreast would follow directly behind the leading companies while Lt. George Francis Mason’s No. 3 Company provided the mopping-up force for bypassed German strongpoints. The fact that relatively new and inexperienced lieutenants commanded two of the companies reflected the shortage of officers that still plagued Canadian Corps.4
Piper Alexander “Alec” McGillivray stood fretting in the trench as the countdown to Zero Hour began. Finally turning to CSM Frank Macdonald of No. 2 Company, the twenty-nine-year-old lance corporal, who hailed originally from Acraracle in the Argyllshire region of Scotland, quietly whispered that he felt “anxious,” afraid that because he was so slight the weight of the pipes and other equipment might leave him scrambling behind the men—which would “bring disgrace on a Highland piper.”
Macdonald pondered the matter for a moment. “Well, if you think that way, ask the company commander to allow you to climb out before us,” he suggested. McGillivray quickly secured Major Gilliat’s permission and as the barrage opened “he led off the advance, well ahead of the attacking wave, playing his pipes.”5
CSM Macdonald set off hot on the piper’s heels as soon as the whistle sounded only to snag his kilt in a tangle of wire and pitch onto his face in the mud. As he struggled to free himself from the wire, Macdonald found himself shoulder to shoulder with a private who had suffered the same head-first plunge. As the two wiped the muck off their faces the private quipped, “Well, Mac, I guess if you and I were hung for beauty now, we would be innocent men.”6
It was a clockwork advance, for the bombardment shattered the will of the Germans in the front line. Those not killed or wounded either surrendered or fled. The leading companies hurdled the German front trenches and pressed on across ground badly cratered by the bombardment for Blue Line about 500 yards distant. In negotiating around a concentration of craters, Lt. Petrie strayed far to the left and a dangerous gap opened between his company and Gilliat’s. From his rear position, Lt. James McIvor, leading a No. 3 Company platoon acting as a wiring party, assessed the problem and rushed his men forward and plugged the hole between the two companies. Twenty-five minutes after Zero Hour the battalion sent back a signal that it was on Blue Line.
A forty-minute planned pause followed to let the artillery work over the ground about 200 yards to their front. While the Canadians waited, two German machine-gun crews slithered up intervening communication trenches to bring them into range. From the cover of a crater, Lewis gunner Cpl. Harry Gracie spotted one of the crews “groping around under cover trying to place the gun; he waited until the Germans fully exposed themselves and then, opening fire, killed the whole of the crew.” This action earned Gracie a Military Medal. Meanwhile, the moment the other gun crew opened fire its position was detected by CSM Macdonald and one of No. 2 Company’s other sergeants destroyed it with a few well-placed bombs.7
Throughout this action, Piper McGillivray had played without pause, marching up and down in front of the Blue Line trench. Then, seeing that 13 th Battalion on the left was having a bad time because the trench where they were forming up was being subjected to intense German artillery fire, McGillivray paraded over to rally the beleaguered Royal Highlanders.
“Just at this time,” wrote the 13th Battalion’s regimental historian, “when all ranks were feeling the strain of remaining inactive under galling fire, and when the casualties had mounted to over 100, a skirl of bagpipes was heard and along the 13th front came a piper of the 16th Canadian Scottish. This inspired individual, eyes blazing with excitement, and kilt proudly swinging to his measured tread, made his way along the line, piping as only a true Highlander can when men are dying, or facing death, all around him.
“Shell fire seemed to increase as the piper progressed and more than once it appeared that he was down, but the god of brave men was with him in that hour, and he disappeared unharmed, to the flank whence he had come.”
As McGillivray rejoined the battalion, No. 2 Company and No. 4 Company headed for the Green Line. Resistance was slight and the objective fell in short order, but the trench proved so badly damaged as to be unrecognizable as a defensive work. McGillivray strode right over it without pausing and a good number of No. 2 Company followed. Suddenly a German soldier rushed McGillivray, who dropped his instrument and engaged the man in hand-to-hand combat. For several minutes the two men rolled back and forth in the mud until McGillivray managed to kill the German with his bare hands. Stumbling to his feet, the piper cast about in vain for his pipes. CSM Macdonald came over to McGillivray and said headquarters had sent orders for the pipers to go to the rear. With the advance over, their job was done and they posed too conspicuous a target for the snipers who would soon be harrying the battalion front lines.
McGillivray pleaded not to have to go back until his pipes were found, but Macdonald promised he would see to the job personally. Reluctantly McGillivray departed. The next morning Macdonald found the pipes 40 yards in front of the Green Line and took them back to give to McGillivray. But the piper was not to be found at headquarters and nobody there had seen him. After a lengthy search it was concluded McGillivray must have been blown to pieces by a German shell and disappeared into the mud without a trace. His courage on August 15 ultimately led to a posthumous Military Medal.8
To the right of the Canadian Scottish line, Hill 70 had fallen. So too had all the other Canadian objectives. In the early afternoon a desperate counterattack struck the southern front held by 2 nd Division, but it was shattered by Canadian artillery and the new line held firm. Finally the Germans confined themselves to subjecting the Green Line to a sustained artillery pounding that went on long into the night.9 For the Canadian Scottish, the shelling and counterattacks that developed the next morning and continued until they were relieved on August 17 took a heavier toll than the actual advance.
The casualty toll could have been even higher had it not been for the sharp eyes of a No. 2 Company sentry who at daybreak on August 16 told CSM Macdonald that he suspected shell-holes to their front actually concealed an underground fortification still held by the Germans. He had noted the position of an abandoned Maxim machine gun lying in No Man’s Land about 50 yards from his station, only to realize a little later the gun had mysteriously moved several yards. The sentry was convinced the Germans were covertly retrieving the big gun which, unloaded, weighed forty pounds.
Macdonald and a couple of men went out to investigate and found the machine gun lying on the edge of a fortified shell-hole covered with chicken wire. Three wooden steps led to the entrance of a well-concealed dugout inside the crater. Macdonald could hear voices muttering in German down in the dugout’s darkness, but when he called to them to surrender the voices abruptly ceased.
Tearing away the chicken wire, Macdonald and his men threw a couple of Mills bombs down the steps. Then they rushed in, coming face to face with three terrified lads who appeared younger than eighteen and had been wounded by shrapnel from the bombs. Macdonald made the prisoners carry the Maxim back to the Canadian lines.10
In the early morning hours of August 17, the Canadian Scottish began pulling out of the line in a relief so hampered by heavy shelling that Lt.-Col. Peck and his battalion headquarters staff had to personally oversee the process by extracting the men in groups and then feeding the same number of relieving troops through to the front. It was a process that took hours and at its end Peck and his staff were “a group of tired looking, mud-stained men, headed by the pipe major.” To buoy their spirits, Pipe Major James Groat insisted on playing c
easelessly as the weary party walked in the pre-dawn light toward the rear-area village where the Canadian Scottish had been billeted. The skirl of Groat’s bagpipes warned the battalion of Peck’s approach and it was to his surprise that, as the headquarters party came along the main street, a large group of soldiers “rushed out into the street, many of them without boots or puttees and some without kilts. They greeted the party with cheer upon cheer and, in a band, escorted the procession to Battalion headquarters.”11
Although the men’s enthusiasm was in large part due to their belief that, despite a hard fight, they had suffered few casualties, the battalion had not got off that lightly—257 being killed or wounded. Two officers had died—including Major James Murphy—and five were wounded. In the ranks, 61 men died and 189 suffered wounds. 12 But still they had tasted a second victory and morale soared with some prognostications that the war would be over before year’s end.
On August 19, Currie decided Hill 70 was secure enough to begin the job of capturing Lens. Two days later 4th Division struck and a bitter fight ensued with possession of the town contested until 3rd Division took over and, two days later, the Germans fell back. Canadian Corps tallied its casualties for the full ten-day operation at 9,198. But against this was an intelligence estimate of 30,000 German casualties, mostly inflicted by artillery. The gunners reported that they had never before been presented with so many German troops concentrated in the open and presenting perfect targets. Currie’s intention to seize Hill 70 and bleed the Germans by smashing their counterattacks had worked. Thirty-five counterattacks entailing troops from no less than sixty-nine battalions had been repelled by the Canadians.13
The “Canadians had attained their ends,” read one German report. “The fighting at Lens had cost us a considerable number of troops which had to be replaced. The entire preconceived plan for relieving the troops in Flanders had been upset. One had to reckon with a continuation of the attack by the Canadian divisions. Crown Prince Rupprecht therefore refrained from attempting immediately to recapture the lost ground at Lens, which would have required strong new forces and promoted the very intentions of the opponent.”14Belatedly the German Sixth Army commander had twigged to Currie’s intention, but it was clear the Germans were done offering themselves up for slaughter by massed artillery.
First British Army’s Gen. Henry Horne and Currie both wanted to ensure Lens was secure with a two-pronged offensive, with one advancing southeastward from Hill 70 while the other drove northeastward from Eleu to gain the Sallumines Hills. Such an operation would force the Germans to continue committing men to this front who otherwise could be sent to the aid of those divisions heavily engaged in the Ypres Salient. But it soon became clear that Haig was directing so many British troops and supplies to his operations in the salient that First Army could not remain on the offensive.
This left Canadian Corps with little to do but stand in place, which was fine as far as most of the troops were concerned. Trench watch was considered better than battle because every stretch spent on the front earned equal time in a rest camp. Not that trench duty was without its hazards. During this period, which ended on October 14, 16th Battalion suffered ninety-seven casualties of which twenty-three were fatal. But that was a far cry from the butcher’s bills of battle, especially as it represented the passing of forty days.15
Such periods of relative calm never lasted. On October 3, Currie was warned that Canadian Corps would go north to Ypres Salient. Passchendaele was now a household word in Britain and it would soon resonate in Canada. “Passchendaele,” Currie bellowed on receiving the news. “What’s the good of it? Let the Germans have it—keep it—rot in it! Rot in the mud! There is a mistake somewhere. It must be a mistake! It isn’t worth a drop of blood.”16
For three long months, Passchendaele had thirstily soaked up all the blood British and Anzac troops could spill. On July 31, the Third Battle of Ypres had begun and before the day was out 30,000 Commonwealth troops had fallen dead or wounded. Since then, the toll had risen steadily, surpassing 100,000 by mid-October. German casualties were little less. By early October, Haig was convinced the Germans were all but used up and one more push would collapse their front. When four Australian and four British divisions won significant gains at a cost of about 20,000 casualties, but inflicted equal losses on the Germans and took 5,000 prisoners, Haig was certain he was right.
Haig was not far off the mark. A later German history described October 4 as “the black day.” Gen. Erich Ludendorff made special mention of the “enormous losses” his army had suffered and Crown Prince Rupprecht began considering what had hitherto been unthinkable—abandoning the ridges that hemmed the British inside the salient and falling back to a new defensive line.17
One more push, Haig decided, even as the weather deteriorated on October 7 with a gale of “cold, drenching rain” transforming the battlefield into a freezing hellhole. Passchendaele Ridge would fall, the Field Marshal declared, and the troops would be spared another mud-drenched winter in the bogs below. His Australian and British generals thought a winter in the bogs preferable to attacking the ridges in the rapidly deteriorating weather, but ultimately they conceded to try. And try they did on October 9 at a cost of 10,000 casualties and then again on October 13 for a loss of 13,000 more. That finished the Australian and British divisions. 18 So Haig sent for the Canadians.
Currie had prayed these attacks would succeed and spare his men from the grinder. He arrived at British Second Army headquarters despondent but determined to argue against madness. Taking army commander Gen. Sir Herbert Plumer aside, Currie said the Canadian casualties in a Passchendaele operation would number 16,000. Even were they to succeed would such a sacrifice be worthwhile? Plumer said Currie had no choice. The orders were plain.
Haig and Currie met later at Canadian Corps Headquarters. What words passed between them went unrecorded, but observers noted Haig’s body language seemed to indicate coaxing, Currie’s resistance. Then Currie nodded, as if in agreement.
Thereafter Haig spoke to the Canadian officers. Passchendaele, he declared, “must be taken, and I have come to ask the Canadian Corps to do it.” Currie, he acknowledged, “is strongly opposed to doing so. But I have succeeded in overcoming his scruples. Some day I hope to tell you why this must be done, but in the mean time I ask you to take my word for it.… I may say General [Currie] has demanded an unprecedented amount of artillery and I have been forced to acquiesce.”19
Currie made no bones of the fact that he thought Canadian Corps was being put at risk to “resuscitate a campaign that was already played out.” But Haig continued to pound the drum of the British need to support the French by pinning down German divisions, doing the same to divert attention from a planned offensive by British Fourth and Fifth armies near Cambrai, and to secure a winter line on Passchendaele Ridge above the miasma of mud.20
Canadian Corps relieved the 2nd Anzac Corps on October 18, moving into a front that ran along the Stroombeek Valley between Gravenstafel Ridge and the heights of Passchendaele. The Canadians had known this ground during previous deployments, but they barely recognized it now. The villages of St. Jean, Wieltje, and Fortuin had disappeared without a trace. So had the woods that had been green in 1915 and the farms that had still looked prosperous. In their place was a wasteland.
The shelling that destroyed all the natural drainage had combined with relentless rains to transform the low ground facing the ridge into a deep bog of yellow mud. The countless shell-holes were brimming with brackish water. Oozing mud had swallowed the roads and footpaths whole. Duckboard pathways built over the mud were perilous, and soldiers could conceivably drown with a misstep. Strewn everywhere were corpses, entangled in the wire on the slopes of the ridges, floating in the shell-holes, and laying half-buried in the mud. There had been no ceasefires and the removal of wounded alone was almost beyond the resources of the stretcher-bearers. It was not uncommon for sixteen men to be required to carry out a single wounded soldier and
inevitably some members of a stretcher-bearer party would be shot down by the machine guns on the ridge. Rats picked through the mud for their next meal and, more boldly—chattering and flapping—did thousands of crows. Until temperatures dropped to freezing, flies continued to swarm by the millions, combining with the omnipresent lice and fleas to constantly crawl upon the men’s skin and uniforms. The stench of rotting meat mixed with human and animal waste was appalling.
Currie, who “consistently sought to pay the price of victory in shells and not the lives of his men,” concentrated on getting the guns needed before Haig forced an attack upon him. Inherent to the Canadian Corps were 350 field and heavy guns manned by 20,000 men, but he had been forced to leave some of these behind in the Lens area. Promised that 250 heavies had been left by the Australians for Canadian use, Currie’s gunners found only 227 and 89 of these were non-operational. Of 306 18-pounder field guns, only half were serviceable and many were “dotted about in the mud wherever they happened to get bogged.” Because of the mud, most of the guns were closely and dangerously bunched together.
The gunners and engineers set about putting things to rights with construction. Between mid-October and mid-November they constructed two miles of double plank road and more than 4,000 yards of heavy tramlines that enabled the movement of guns, ammunition, and men. Entire brigades were put to carrying and building.211st Division’s 3rd Brigade drew the lot of serving as a workforce and so the Canadian Scottish “for miles … trudged under the shell fire, up the roads and narrow board walks to Passchendaele, at the apex of the salient; they supplied work parties and carrying parties; they held the scratches and shell-holes dignified with the name of front line; No. 16 Platoon, by means of a minor operation, captured a ruined house on the left of the Battalion front; but neither the 16 th nor any other unit of the 3rd Brigade took part in a major attack.”22Meanwhile, the corps paid the cost of the construction work with 1,500 casualties.23