Vimy

by Pierre Berton

  The value of the raids as a training ground for other branches of the service was becoming obvious. That same February morning, the Canadian Black Watch of Montreal decided to take a signaller and an artillery observer with them on an attack against the German trenches. The signaller, who volunteered, was a tough little private from Brantford named Harry Coutts. The artillery observer was Lieutenant Conn Smythe of the 40th Battery, field artillery – the same Conn Smythe who would one day build the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto and become one of the best-known figures in Canadian hockey.

  The Germans and the Black Watch faced each other from the rims of the craters that lay in front of their forward trenches. For several days the Montrealers had pounded the enemy with that all-purpose piece of trench artillery, the Stokes mortar, which could be fired from behind the security of the parapet, its range corrected by the use of a simple periscope. At 9:13 A.M., nineteen rifle grenadiers stationed in the forward craters opened up with a barrage of Mills bombs. Two minutes later, the artillery barrage began, and fifty members of the battalion headed across No Man’s Land with Coutts and Smythe right behind them. Coutts carried a phone, stringing wire as he went, so that Smythe could report the effect of the fire close at hand rather than from an observation post farther back.

  The first salvo looked too high. Smythe called back on the phone: “Drop two hundred.” Immediately he saw white puffs of smoke among the attacking Black Watch. “My God,” he thought, “I’m killing my own men.”

  Smythe had no wish to return to his own lines if that were true and so, drawing his revolver, he ran down among the raiders, peppering away at the Germans up ahead-a wiry bantam cock of a man, determined to expiate his error and sell his own life dearly.

  At that point he discovered to his relief that the puffs of white were caused not by his telephoned correction at all but by German stick bombs bursting around him. He jumped into the nearest enemy trench, banged away, hit two of the enemy, ducked around a traverse, and ran straight into a huge German standing behind the parapet, his rifle aimed at the advancing Canadians. Smythe jammed his pistol into the German’s belly, fired, and had the satisfaction of seeing the man slide to the ground, cursing him. Now, with Lieutenant Gillingwater, the leader of the Canadians, wounded and out of action, Smythe led a fighting withdrawal back to the Canadian trenches. He didn’t use his revolver again until he reached the relative safety of his own lines. Then, in an act of defiance, he turned about, levelled his revolver at the enemy trenches, and squeezed the trigger. To his horror it gave only a click. A chill rippled down his backbone as he realized that he hadn’t fired a shot since he’d hit the big German in the enemy trench. If he had got off just one more bullet in the wild dash before that fateful meeting, that click would have meant his own death and he, not the German, would have slid into the mud uttering one final curse.

  From raids like this one the gunners gained practical experience in forward observation and telephone communication. Conn Smythe earned the Military Cross. And, because of a single bullet, Toronto eventually gained a new National League hockey team and an arena to go with it.

  4

  Were the trench raids worth the cost? Certainly they served a multitude of purposes: they provided valuable information about the enemy, they kept the Germans in a constant state of tension, they prevented the Canadian troops from growing stale, they taught both men and officers how to act under fire, and they gave clear proof to the various arms of the service of the value of close co-operation.

  To Arthur Currie, the main-indeed, the only-purpose of a trench raid was to get information that would help prepare for the battle to come. He thought nothing of cancelling one raid at the last moment when he discovered that he already had the information the raid would have brought in. “I’m not sacrificing one man unnecessarily,” he told his disappointed officers on that occasion.

  But if a raid didn’t give him the needed information he could be ruthless with his senior commanders, as W.A. “Billy” Griesbach, the one-time “Boy Mayor of Edmonton,” discovered after his brigade had failed on several occasions to capture a single German.

  “I want a prisoner, not for curiosity’s sake, not to see what he looks like,” Currie told Griesbach acidly. “I want to get from him information that will be of some use in the preparation for the forthcoming operation, so naturally I want a prisoner before Zero Day.” If the battalions weren’t successful that very night then, Currie ordered, they would mount raids every three hours until they were successful. “I want results and I want them now!” He got them.

  But Arthur Currie thought the big raids took too large a toll. He clearly believed that most of the purposes could be achieved by the smaller raiding parties that his own division mounted.

  This brought him into open conflict with Byng, who was convinced that the large raids contributed to the morale of the troops. Currie’s stubborn refusal to bend caused the first violent row between the two. Byng claimed that the 1st Division “was losing its go” and told Currie off. Currie held his ground as he vainly tried to search for a match to light his pipe; he was clearly shaken by Byng’s tongue-lashing. Nonetheless Byng, who believed in giving his divisional commanders their head, let him have his way with his division.

  In the last two weeks before the Vimy attack, the Canadians lost 1,653 officers and men killed, wounded, or missing – the equivalent of almost two battalions. Most of these casualties were the result of trench raids-a high price to pay for the results achieved. The raids were certainly necessary-but were they necessary on a grand scale? Against the educational advantages achieved through interservice co-operation must be weighed the weakening of the fighting battalions in the fortnight before the battle. The casualties in those last two weeks included seventy-one officers, all trained men, who would not be present to lead their units on April 9. And against the morale-building qualities, which Julian Byng extolled, must be balanced the morale lowering that occurred when a raid went sour or too many men were lost.

  The largest raid attempted by the Canadians at Vimy took place on March 1, five weeks before the attack. The casualties were appalling and the raid itself was a ghastly failure, an object lesson in how not to conduct a raid, or, as it was called at the time, a “reconnaissance in force.” A quarter-century later the same phrase would be used to describe the Canadian raid on Dieppe in the Second World War. The reasons for that famous failure bear a distressing similarity to the March 1, 1917, raid: postponement because of weather, leading to a lack of surprise; failure to soften up the target before the assault; the stubborn insistence by the High Command, in the face of repeated warnings, to carry on regardless of consequences; and lastly, the hollow justification – that valuable information and experience was gained.

  The March 1 raid was a mammoth endeavour involving seventeen hundred men of the 4th Division, half of them plucked from the 11th Brigade, whose commander, Victor Odlum, was the chief exponent of the trench raid, which he’d developed in his days as a battalion C.O. with the 1st Division.

  Their task was to reconnoitre and damage the German defences on the slopes of Hill 145, the whale’s hump of Vimy Ridge, which Odlum’s brigade was scheduled to attack on the morning of April 9. Surprise was to be the key. Since it was felt that a bombardment would alert the Germans, there was to be none. Instead, clouds of poisonous gas – chlorine and phosgene – would be released from cylinders in the Canadian trenches to smother the German positions. The wire would be cut by the attacking troops using tubes filled with ammonal, a high explosive.

  It would all be a piece of cake- or so everybody was told. Jack Quinnell, the red-headed scout from Toronto who helped bring the tanks forward, was told that the new gas-phosgene-was colourless, noiseless, and completely deadly. “All you have to do once this blows across is just go as if you were on the parade ground,” Quinnell was told. It was said that the gas would corrode every rifle and field gun on the enemy front line-that the troops’ chief task was simply to snip t
he epaulettes from the uniforms of the dead for identification, then skip back home for breakfast.

  This was mainly hokum. Yet those in charge believed the hokum, pinning their faith on the ultimate weapon, as commanders had before them and have since. Magically the clouds of gas would render the enemy impotent and allow the troops to saunter across the enemy lines unmolested. But it didn’t work out that way. It is dangerous for generals to believe in magic.

  The awkward gas cylinders, known to all ranks as “rats,” were carried forward on the backs of sappers – “the frightfulness squad,” as they were dubbed. The cylinders weighed 160 pounds each-as much as a middleweight boxer at the top of his class. Each was suspended from a long bar that banged against the tank as the back-packers struggled forward, braving the wobbling duckboards of the Zouave Valley and exposed to German fire for most of the four miles between the dump and the front line.

  The cylinders, in batteries of four, would spew out their poison through the nozzles of rubber tubes, to be thrown over the parapet when the attack began. The idea was that the gas would blow across No Man’s Land and penetrate for three hundred yards into the German lines. It did not seem to occur to anyone that the gas, being heavier than air, has difficulty climbing hills and has a tendency to drift into low-lying areas such as shell holes-the very depressions the assaulting troops would use for cover. Even if the weather were perfect for the occasion-a steady, gentle breeze blowing eastward-the situation would be dicey. But the weather wasn’t perfect; it rarely is in battle. The wind refused to co-operate: it was variable; it blew the wrong way; it became too strong to be effective. The attack was postponed for three days and then, when the weather remained variable, for another two.

  The night of February 28 arrived. By this time there were several unfortunate complications. The troops, having stood out in the cold and the mud for several days, were weary, wet, and dispirited from the strain of waiting. The cylinders had been leaking gas, and some men became ill. Worse, everybody in the back areas seemed to know all about the coming attack. Jack Quinnell was asked constantly by the French villagers: “When’s the gas attack coming off?” If they knew, surely the Germans knew.

  Worst of all, the weather deteriorated. By now a strong wind was blowing toward the Canadian lines, and it was obvious, at the battalion level, that an attack would be suicidal. The battalion commanders realized this and protested. Lieutenant-Colonel A.H.G. Kemball, the crisply handsome C.O. of the 54th Kootenays, tried to convince the brass hats in the rear that the raid should be postponed or cancelled. The higher ups would have none of it.

  If Kemball went through channels, as he must have, his protest would have been made to his brigade commander, Victor Odlum, the master of the trench raid. Thus Odlum must bear some of the responsibility for the carnage that followed, though David Watson, the divisional commander, is also not free of criticism since this was a divisional raid, involving four battalions from two brigades, only one of which was under Odlum’s command. There is no evidence that either Watson or Odlum proposed a delay (although there are hints that the army command, under the British general, Henry Home, continued adamant). But there is plenty of evidence that Kemball protested.

  Why was the raid allowed to go on? Partly because of the distance of the generals from the front line. Few red tabs were ever seen in the forward trenches (though Byng was certainly an exception). Staffs fought paper wars with piasticine models, safe from the moan of the minnenwerfers or the whine of the whizbangs. Yet Odlum had the reputation of being a front-line brigadier-general, and Odlum let two of his battalions go forward to certain destruction. Why?

  The answer has to do with the impetus of battle and the mind-set of the military. At certain points, events take on a momentum of their own that is difficult to arrest. A general hesitating on the eve of battle is like a bride who goes to the altar realizing at the last moment that she no longer loves her intended. Can she really undo all those weeks of planning, cause a scene that will humiliate her friends and relatives, and turn herself into an object of scorn and laughter? The logistics alone are complicated. What happens to all the wedding invitations, the plans for a reception, the food that has been ordered, the dresses the bridesmaids have paid for? Perhaps, after all, the marriage will work out-easier to go on than turn back! It takes a strong-willed and courageous woman to change her mind at this point – and a courageous military leader to cancel a complicated operation.

  The will and the courage were lacking in the dark hours of the morning of March 1, 1917. Currie, who had a reputation for standing up to his superiors, might have averted the tragedy that followed. Watson didn’t. Too much planning, too much effort, too much training had gone into the operation. Surely after all that brawn and brainwork it couldn’t fail! No doubt the wind would change. Surely the Germans were ignorant of the impending attack. No doubt the troops would act as supermen and carry the day. And so the division gambled, as Mountbatten was to gamble at Dieppe and (to be fair) as Eisenhower was to gamble on D-Day, 1944. After all, Byng himself had said it was better to do something in a crisis than nothing; and if this attack came off there would be kudos and probably promotions for all.

  So Kemball was ignored. That gallant officer-the adjective in his case is deserved-defied orders and refused to stay in the rear when his men were in peril. He led them personally on an attack he knew was futile.

  For the Germans knew everything. They had heard the clanking of the gas cylinders being brought forward days before. They knew the details of the plan from two of their own men, prisoners who had escaped from the compound and made it back to their own lines. They heard it from the chatter of the Canadians, caught on listening devices in the tunnels below the trenches. And so they set up new machine-gun posts, which they kept masked until the very moment of the battle. The young men from the Kootenays, the Seaforths from Vancouver, the boys from Mississauga, and the Highlanders from Montreal were mowed down almost before they left the security of their own lines. And when they tried to take cover in the shell holes they died horribly. The gas – the ultimate weapon, which was supposed to nullify all opposition – was waiting for them in the slime.

  5

  The human details of the gas attack are heart breaking. The poisonous clouds were released in two waves, the phosgene first at three that morning, the chlorine two hours later. It was more than ineffective; it killed the men it was supposed to cover. The first cloud hung heavy over the battlefield; the second was blown back in the faces of the advancing troops.

  On the left of the line the Seaforths were badly mauled. They were supposed to jump off at 6:40 after the gas had saturated the enemy. But ten minutes before the assault, the Germans laid down a barrage on the Seaforth positions. The shells hit the gas cylinders, which exploded, putting half of “B” Company out of action. Because these men, strangling in the fumes, could not go forward, “C” Company behind them couldn’t go either and had to abandon its part in the raid.

  Behind the lines, in the 50th Battalion from Calgary, which was held in reserve, Victor Wheeler lay in his bunk of chicken wire, waiting for the order to move into the trenches and go over the top. It seemed to that sensitive young signaller that every vestige of humanity was perishing that dark morning. Troubled and confused, he prayed for forgiveness for mankind even as the specialists nearby were discussing the details of releasing the gas from the cylinders. All Wheeler could think of was the young men who would soon die in agony. It did not occur to him that it was his own comrades who would succumb.

  Not far away, in the forward trench of Lieutenant-Colonel Sam Beckett’s Mississauga Battalion, the eighteen-year-old scout, Jack Quinnell, heard a tremendous roar and realized it was the sound of gas escaping from the cylinders. Quinnell ruefully remembered the briefing he’d received. “Where’s all the quiet gas they told us about?” he asked himself. Was everything else they’d told him equally false? He peered over the top, saw the gas creeping into the shell holes, and realized he�
�d been sold a bill of goods.

  Victor Wheeler, too, heard a frightening noise, like the sound of water rushing over rocks. But this was not the sound of escaping gas; it was far more horrifying. This was the noise of dozens of rats scrambling in terror into the entrance of the dugout, tails twitching, instinctively fleeing from the poison. They scurried under the blankets and ground sheets, hid under the signal boxes, and squeezed under any loose board. Unlike the troops, they sensed disaster.

  The two battalions of Victor Odlum’s 11th Brigade went over the top after the gas was released and following the briefest of barrages-a mere seven minutes of shellfire. Sam Beckett, the commander of the 75th, followed Kemball’s example and insisted on leading his men personally in an attack that he too knew had little chance of success.

  Kemball’s Kootenay battalion was immediately mowed down by the German machine guns. These had been sited on the pathways through the Canadian wire, a task made easy by the presence of large battalion signs marking the attack routes. Only five men of the Kootenay battalion actually reached the enemy front line. Of these only three managed to scale the parapet, all dying in the attempt. The surviving pair miraculously escaped, crawling back from shell hole to shell hole, through their own gas and the enemy fire. Of the four hundred and twenty members of the battalion who took part in the attack, more than two hundred were casualties, including thirteen officers. Kemball himself had died, as he almost certainly knew he would, caught on the German wire.

  The 75th from Mississauga, on the Kootenays’ flank, was also badly cut up. When Jack Quinnell went over the top, gas mask firmly in place, he could see his friends dropping all around him. Then his vision blurred as his mask fogged. He flung it aside, dodged ahead coughing and choking until he found a hole to shelter him from the withering gunfire. The training program’s orderly progress by section, platoon, and company bore no relation to the ragged and confused mob of men crawling and stumbling back and forth between the opposing lines. Quinnell’s shell hole was already occupied by his own officer, who turned to him and said, “I’m going to make a run for it; you can do what you like.” He stood up, started to run, and was felled by an enemy bullet.