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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 46256
   :PG.Title: In the Ypres Salient
   :PG.Released: 2014-07-12
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Beckles Willson
   :DC.Title: In the Ypres Salient
              The Story of a Fortnight's Canadian Fighting, June 2-16, 1916
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1916
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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IN THE YPRES SALIENT
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      :alt: THE YPRES SALIENT. See Key on page 6 (*From the Picture copyrighted and published by R. Dunthorne, Vigo Street, London, W.*)

      THE YPRES SALIENT. 
      See Key on page `6`_
      (*From the Picture copyrighted and published by 
      R. Dunthorne, Vigo Street, London, W.*)

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      IN THE YPRES
      SALIENT

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      THE STORY OF A
      FORTNIGHT'S CANADIAN FIGHTING
      JUNE 2-16, 1916.

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      BY

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      BECKLES WILLSON,

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      *Author of "Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal,"
      "The Romance of Canada" etc., etc.*

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      SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON
      KENT & CO. LTD. 4 STATIONERS'
      HALL COURT : : LONDON, E.C.

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   IN THE YPRES SALIENT.

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Long after the issue of minor engagements in
this War are forgotten, and when everybody has
ceased to care whether at any moment we
gained or lost a hundred yards of ground or a
mile of trench, the memory of how the Canadians
fought against hopeless odds near Hooge will be
remembered, and Canada will be proud and the
Empire will be proud of these men.  Nor will
Canada or the Empire ever forget--what every
neutral in the world should be told to-day--how
the Germans called these men cowards.

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*The Times, June* 12, 1916.

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   AVANT-PROPOS.

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Je saisis cette occasion pour rendre un nouveau hommage
à l'armée britannique, dont la longue et héroïque rèsistance
a rendu notre ville inviolée.  Si Ypres a été détruite par
les barbares germains en haine d'Angleterre, notre
magnanime protectrice, nous avons l'espoir que, grâce à
votre pays, la ville martyre ressuscitera aussi belle, si non
aussi prospère, qu'elle le fut aux siècles de sa splendeur.
Déjà nous avons un Vicomte d'Ypres portant un nom
anglais! déjà des hommes généreux de votre pays songent
à faire reconstruire nos splendides monuments.  Pourquoi
ne pourrions nous pas espérer que le sol d'Ypres, arrosé
du sang de vos enfants et où reposent vos héros morts
pour nous, verra prochainement surgir une ville digne du
nom Anglais et de notre ancienne renommée?

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   :alt: Signature of René Colaert, Bourgmestre d'Ypres

   Signature of René Colaert, Bourgmestre d'Ypres

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   To the Memory

   OF

   MAJOR-GENERAL
   MALCOLM SMITH MERCER,
   C.B.

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.. _`6`:

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   :alt: KEY TO "THE YPRES SALIENT." By W. L. WYLIE, R.A.

   KEY TO "THE YPRES SALIENT." 
   By W. L. WYLIE, R.A.





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   PREFATORY NOTE ON THE SALIENT

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On October 16th, 1914, the Ypres Salient,
the theatre of three of the most deadly
and critical battles in this War, was born.
Up to that date the area it comprises--a
few thousand acres at most--was merely a
tract of well-tilled Flemish meadowland, with
patches of forest and here and there a village
or hamlet.

Ten weeks before the Germans had invaded
Belgium, and in the fateful and anxious time
which followed, the Belgians had been pressed
slowly back, those who had not been utterly
crushed.  Antwerp fell, and a mighty German
host, foiled in its advance southward to
Paris, was moving relentlessly towards the
sea-coast, destroying and desolating the land
as it came.

A newly-landed British force advanced to
check them and to take up a position in the
long line of Allied troops.  This force, the
7th Division, under Major-General Capper,
and the 3rd Cavalry Division, commanded by
Major-General the Hon. Julian Byng,
marching through the quaint old Flemish city of
Ypres, penetrated to a point six miles beyond
the British, French, and Belgian alignment as
it ran north and south.  There they halted,
their ranks causing the Allied front to project
forward a bold "salient," or peninsula, on the
map.  To crush that salient--to flatten out
that line at any cost--instantly became the aim
of the enemy.  Consequently, he flung himself
on the point of the Salient (which was then
Becelaere) and the fierce and bloody First
Battle of Ypres was the result.  It lasted
from October 20th to November 11th.  On
October 30th the Kaiser told his troops that
they must break through the line to Ypres,
and to the Bavarian Crown Prince he said:
"Take Ypres, or die."  He considered the
attack to be "of vital importance to the
successful issue of the war."  It was then that
we became familiar with the names of these
little villages and hamlets, first drenched with
blood and then crumbled to dust, Zonnebeke,
Zillebeke, Wytschaete, Hooge, Langemarcke,
and the rest; with those fields, woods, and
hillocks which have then and since seen some
of the most terrible slaughter and the most
gallant deeds in all military history, and where
lie to-day more than one hundred thousand
of our British dead.  The enemy recoiled,
bruising his legions against the sharpness of
the Salient, and his failure marked a notable
stage in the progress of the War.


For six months the two hostile armies
faced one another in the crescent line of
trenches defending Ypres towards the east.
Spring came, and on April 22nd the Second
Battle of Ypres began, lasting until May 13th,
only two days less than the first.  In that
second action the Canadians won deathless
renown.  They had then only a single division
at the front, commanded by Lieutenant-General
Alderson, and at the end of February
were entrusted with the task of defending the
north-eastern segment of the Salient.  Two
days before the battle the bombardment of
Ypres re-began--a bombardment which did
not cease until the picturesque little city was
a shapeless heap of ruins.  While the shells
rained upon Ypres, the Germans let loose the
hideous fumes of poison gas upon the French
trenches, causing a four mile breach in the
line, into which the foe came pouring.

But the Canadians, staggering under the
crushing weight of the artillery assault, held
firm.  Although the losses of the British were
appalling, and the Salient was blunted a little,
the path to Calais through Ypres was still barred.

In the thirteen months which followed
there was constant bombardment and much
intermittent fighting, sometimes, as at
St. Eloi last March, fierce and bloody.  But the
Salient was held fast; more and more was it
consecrated by heroic deeds, as

   |    A corner of a foreign field
   |  That is for ever England.
   |

"When," wrote a gifted English chronicler,[#]
many months ago, "the War is over, this
triangle of meadowland, with a ruined city for
its base, will be an enclave of Belgian soil
consecrated as the holy land of two great
peoples.  It may be that it will be specially
set apart as a memorial place; it may be that
it will be unmarked, and that the countryfolk
will till and reap as before over the vanishing
trench lines.  But it will never be common
ground.  It will be for us the most hallowed
spot on earth, for it holds our bravest dust,
and it is the proof and record of a new spirit.
In the past, when we have thought of Ypres,
we have thought of the British flag preserved
there, which Clare's Regiment, fighting for
France, captured at the Battle of Ramillies;
the name of the little Flemish town has
recalled the divisions in our own race and the
centuries-old conflict between France and
Britain.  But from now and henceforth it will
have other memories.  It will stand as a
symbol of unity and alliance, unity within our
Empire, unity within our Western civilisation,
that true alliance and that lasting unity which
are won and sealed by a common sacrifice."

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[#] Mr. John Buchan.

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Once again, foiled in his designs on Verdun,
the greatest battlefield of the War, the enemy,
perhaps for the last time, sought to wrest this
sacred ground, the Ypres Salient and Ypres
itself from our hands.  This time the
Canadians had three divisions in the fighting-line.
The Corps commander, on the 2nd of June
last, when the German fury burst forth anew,
was that same General (now Sir) Julian Byng
who had first, in October, 1914, at the head
of his cavalry troops, marked out the frontiers
of the Salient.

What happened in this Third Battle,
which began on June 2nd, and may be said
to have finished June 16th, when we regained
the ground lost at the outset, is imperfectly
related in the following pages.  It was written
from day to day by one who was on the spot,
and so may serve to convey to the reader
something of the spirit with which our
Canadians fought, and may also suggest a
reason for their pride in having again
successfully held the Salient against the foe.

*It is said that Ypres and the Salient are
chiefly retained for sentimental reasons.  This
is true, in the sense that this whole War was
avowedly waged, in the first instance, for
sentimental reasons.*

*Not long ago a French general said to me
that the Germans were attacking Verdun, and
the French were defending it, not for strategical,
but for political and dynastic reasons.  "If they
took Verdun to-morrow, they could not advance,
but to lose Verdun would be for France a blow
over the heart."*

*If we have pledged our honour to Belgium,
we are pledged to the hilt to guard the soil of
Ypres inviolate from the heel of the living enemy.
It is only a heap of ruins, but it is an eternal
memorial of British valour.  It is only a
shell-swept graveyard, but the graves are those of our
heroic dead.*

*To abandon Ypres now would tarnish our
banners.  It would be like offering our sister for
violation because she had been bruised and buffeted
with stones.*

*Military strategy very properly takes into
account political and moral prestige, and to
"straighten out the Salient" by the voluntary
abandonment of a single mile of ground would
inflict upon us a moral and political loss equal
to an army corps.  If Ypres goes, Belgium goes,
and if Belgium goes, whatever the final issue,
something of glory passes from the Allied arms.*

*It is a terrible responsibility to stand steadfast,
but every soldier who has died in the Ypres Salient
has yielded his life to protect his country's honour.
Vulnerable the Salient may be, but our troops are
invulnerable.  While they continue so, Ypres and
this little remaining fragment of Belgian soil and
the path to Calais are safe.*





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   IN THE YPRES SALIENT

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   \I.

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   WITH THE BRITISH ARMY IN THE FIELD,

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*June 3rd.*

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From the summit of the Scherpenburg the
eye sweeps over a low-lying, gently undulating
tract of country chequered by field and copse
and traversed by roads.  On the extreme left
the crumbling towers of the city of Ypres
upstand white in the morning sunlight.  Far
on the right the spires and chimneys of Menin
loom on the distant horizon, Between these
two points in the range of vision a broad
swathe of naked red earth, torn and fretted
and pitted with "craters," marks the eastern
and southern boundary line of the bloodiest
battlefield of the War--the Ypres Salient.
The northern portion of this famous area,
which is almost exactly bisected by the Menin
road, is hidden behind the city.  Here are
Langemarcke, St. Julien, St. Jean, and
Zonnebeke, the scene of Canadian valour thirteen
months ago in the Second Battle of Ypres;
the segment we now overlook touches just
east of Hooge and curves along past Zillebeke,
St. Eloi and Hill 60, which is the
south-western extremity of the Salient.

When the sun rose on Friday, June 2nd,
the whole of this part of the Front, from the
battered little hamlet of Hooge on the north
to Hill 60 on the south, and passing through
Sanctuary Wood, a distance, roughly, of a
couple of miles, was held by 20,000 soldiers
from the Overseas West.  They were drawn
from all classes--ranchers, farmers, miners,
merchants and clerks from Winnipeg, Calgary,
and Vancouver.  There was a sprinkling of
professional soldiers.  Some hailed from
Toronto, and others from as far East as
Montreal.  On their extreme left, where it
linked up with a British Division, was a
famous regiment whose deeds have already
thrilled the Empire, which, repeatedly
shattered, has returned again and again to take up
a post of danger on the firing-line.  The two
divisions to which all these troops belong have
been serving in the Salient for months, watching
eagerly and ardently every move of the
enemy's game.  What that game was every
man knew well.  It was to push past them
and gain that tragedy-haunted grey heap of
crumbling masonry whose name is already
writ large on the page of Canadian history.
This they were--each man of them--pledged
to frustrate to the last drop of his life's blood.
Were the Germans to break through here, all
the efforts of our race for nineteen months
would be as naught, all the valour and
sacrifice would be in vain.

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   :alt: THE RUINS OF YPRES. View taken from an aeroplane. By courtesy of *Illus. Lon. News.*

   THE RUINS OF YPRES. 
   View taken from an aeroplane. 
   By courtesy of *Illus. Lon. News.*

For weeks there had been a lull in the
artillery fire, which is generally heavy in this
sector.  Battalions weary with work and
tension came in and out, as they were relieved
or went to relieve.  Yet uppermost in every
man's mind was this: When will the next
offensive come, and where?  Twice the
Germans have come on in smashing force to
blot out the Ypres Salient from the war
map--two deadly battles have been fought.  Am
I fated to take part in a third?

For several days it had not gone
unobserved that the enemy was unusually active
in pushing forward saps and trenches towards
the centre of this line.  It has since been asked:
Did the General in command of the Third
Canadian Division suspect that something
unusual was impending?  If his suspicions were
aroused, the Germans had worked in impenetrable
secrecy, and even the reports of his
advanced scouts and of the Army aerial
reconnaisance could not have told him that
on this brilliant June morning behind those
hostile parapets, from one to three hundred
yards away, the Hun had been for weeks
massing his artillery--guns of every age, shape,
and calibre, but chiefly the terrible 5.9 naval
guns (the "Silent Lizzies" which our men
have learnt to dread), and howitzers,
mountains of shells, pyramids of bombs.  Long
rows of German gunners along those two
miles of front to-day awaited the signal, and
the hour for the signal had come.  It is stated
that this divisional commander, the gallant
General Mercer, ever alert, often astir soon
after daybreak, never before had gone forward
to the front trenches at so early an hour as
six o'clock.  Small wonder, therefore, that his
appearance there caused comment.  He was
accompanied by his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant
Gooderham, and was met by Brigadier-General
Victor Williams, commanding the
brigade then holding the front trenches.
These, in company with Colonels Shaw and
Ussher, made the inspection.

The soil hereabouts is loose, damp, and
sandy, and only by rigid care and incessant
exertions can the trenches be maintained in
effectiveness.  After breakfast the men were
observed to be everywhere in high spirits, and
went about their tasks of digging, repairing,
rifle cleaning, and general tidying up with
unusual good humour.  General Mercer
entered a number of the observation stations
and officers' dug-outs and examined machine-gun
emplacements with care.  The day's work
had begun well--all were at their appointed
posts.  Occasionally a sniper's rifle rang out, or
a shrapnel shell burst harmlessly overhead.
A soldier told me he was watching a flight of
birds immediately above him in the clear blue
sky, when lo! "the Thing" happened.  This
man did not see the sky again for hours, and
when he did he was on his back, being borne on
a stretcher to the rear.

It was the lull before the storm.  For at
ten minutes to nine o'clock, without any
warning, hell broke loose.  The detonation,
from being stunning, grew absolutely
overwhelming.  It did not come from one part,
but from the whole length of the opposing line
opposite the Canadian Third Division.  It not
only deafened the ear and paralysed the nerves,
but darkened the firmament.  For the next
hour or two dazed men groped about in the
storm, unable to hear any word of command
from their officers, clutching their rifles, trying
to save the surrounding earth from engulfing
them, waiting for what was to happen.  The
two Generals, attempting to reach the
communication trench, found their retreat cut off.

At the outset it appears that no shells, or
very few, fell into the front trenches, and the
machine gunners and trench-mortar men held
to their posts.  But behind our front line a
high wall of descending shells, screaming,
crashing, exploding, emitting clouds of noxious
smoke, shut off chance of escape by the
communication trenches and all hope of support
and succour, from the reserve trenches in the
rear.  Moments passed that seemed hours, and
then the iron and steel missiles began to rain
down and explode in the front line, scattering
death and destruction.  Nothing could live for
long in such a tempest.  The sides of the
trenches began to crumble and fall in.  Yet
by a miracle our men held on, darting from
one devastated section to another in order to
gain refuge.

Beginning with Hooge, which was held--600
yards of front--by the men of the Royal
Canadian Regiment, there came a fifty yards'
gap in the line, low-lying sodden ground which
was undefended--it being thought it might
prove a trap for the Germans; then came the
section of front held by the Princess Patricia's,
which included the embowed hollow known as
the "Appendix" (only forty yards from the
German trenches) and the Loop.  On their
right was a brigade of the Canadian Mounted
Rifles, who defended a portion of Sanctuary
and Armagh Woods.

In the fatal Loop was stationed a whole
company of Princess Patricia's Light Infantry.
As the men hung on there, grim and expectant,
there was a terrific explosion.  When the flying
fragments had subsided, a watcher from a
balloon would have seen only a jagged and
enormous crater--awful in its stillness.  The
Loop had been mined by the enemy, and the
entire company of brave men had perished.
Another monstrous German mine exploded,
but with less deadly effect.

By this time all the communication trenches
were battered flat.  Orders had somehow been
conveyed to the troops to flee for their lives,
and some few hundreds attempted to beat a
retreat through the deadly barrage.  Only a
handful of them got through.  The majority
of the survivors stayed on the ground or hid in
such refuge as they could find.  One--two--three
hours passed; not for a moment--not
for a single second did the hideous thunder
slacken.

It was now that there took place in the
intervening ground between the enemy's
barrage and our own a thousand struggles
between brave men palpitating with health
and life and hundreds of merciless hidden
machines belching forth fragments of insensate
metal.  For this is the essence and image of
modern warfare.  It was flesh and blood
grappling with lead and iron.

On our own side the sound of our artillery
was indistinguishable; but a great volume of
British shells did pierce that infernal barrage
and crash eastward into the German line.
Once, it is related, two shells from opposing
sides collided in mid-air with a shriek like a
woman in agony.  Our gunners worked madly,
and it is certain they wrought havoc amongst
the enemy.  But they were severely
handicapped.  It was an unequal contest.  The
Germans seemed to know the position of every
Canadian battery, and all of these got their
share of the enemy's attention.

In the intervening territory many gallant
men were ministering to the wounded who,
torn, splintered, and bleeding, lay strewn upon
the ground.  Stretcher-bearers were moving
backwards and forwards as though their nerves
were of steel.  Officers were huddling their
men together in places of uncertain sanctuary.
Colonel Shaw, of the Canadian Mounted
Rifles, directed eighty of his men to
Cumberland dug-outs--a little shallow square.  When
it became too hot there, he forced them all out
through a gap and bade them run for their
lives.  He himself refused to leave his wounded
men, and remained there valiantly at his post
until a shell struck him and he was killed.

Seventy yards from this spot was the
dressing-station of the battalion.  Here the
medical officer in charge toiled unceasingly
all through that terrible morning, the wounded
coming to him, some crawling on hands and
knees, by scores.  Before the war Captain
Haight was a jovial ship's surgeon on a steamer
plying between Vancouver and Honolulu.  He
was a man of infinite courage--"nothing ever
rattled him or upset his temper," said one
survivor to me.  When the dressing-station
was shelled, he moved with his assistant,
Lieutenant Atkinson, calmly and coolly to
another on more exposed ground, and
continued his humane work to the last, when he
was dispatched by a bayonet in the most
revolting manner.

Another officer, Captain Harper, who
hailed from Kamsack, in distant Saskatchewan,
was ministering to an officer and three
desperately wounded men.  He refused to leave
them when the lull came and the Germans
were seen advancing, although they urged him
to do so.  "I said I'd stand by you boys," he
said, "and I will."  A few minutes later and
he, too, was gone.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the barrage,
two battalions of desperate men were watching
for a chance to cleave their way through to
their comrades in peril.  But there was little
hope that any in the front line of trenches
survived.

It was now ten minutes to one o'clock.
After four hours' steady bombardment the
storm of shell ceased as suddenly as it had
begun.  Forthright from the opposite trenches
sprang a swarm of grey-coated Huns.  They
must have been firmly convinced that amidst
those rugged, battered, seared, and bloody
mounds and ditches, which four hours before
had been the British trenches, not one single
soul had escaped.  Fully accoutred and with
overcoats and full haversacks, they advanced
in high spirits.  Apart from a few bombers,
not a man of those advancing hordes appears
to have been in proper fighting trim.  They
came forward gaily, light-heartedly, as victors
after a victory.

It was then the most wonderful thing of
the day happened.  Out of the earth there leapt
a handful of wild-eyed soldiers, two officers
amongst them, pale, muddied and reeking with
sweat, who, running forward with upraised
rifles and pistols, bade defiance to the oncoming
foe.  On they ran, and having discharged their
weapons, flung them in the very faces of the
Huns.  Death was inevitable for these--the
only surviving occupants of the British front
line--and it was better to die thus, breathing
defiance to a cowardly enemy, than be shot
in a ditch and spitted through with a Hun
bayonet.  Thus they perished.

Few but the wounded fell into the hands of
the enemy.  A Toronto officer, himself in the
very thick of the fight, and performing wonders
of valour, told me that he had last seen General
Mercer sitting dazed and wounded on the
ground, just as the shell fire ceased and
the Germans were advancing.  Amongst the
prisoners were General Williams and Colonel
Ussher, both of whom were lying in a
communication trench at "Vigo Street."  General
Williams was wounded in the face.

The cessation of fire was the signal for the
Canadian supports to hasten forward to meet
the enemy, who was now advancing in force
and bringing up his machine-gunners and
bombers.  The battalion holding Maple Copse
became planted firmly and refused to budge,
and having dug itself in, held that position all
day.  Colonel Baker, M.P., of the Mounted
Rifles, was unhappily hit by shell in the lungs,
and died later in the day.  The Princess
Patricia's fought with their accustomed
gallantry, led by the brave Colonel Buller,
lately Military Secretary to H.R.H. the
Duke of Connaught, and helped, although at
terrible cost, to check the further German
advance.

Buller, his blood up, seeing his men giving
way a little, ordered them to charge along a
trench known as Gordon Road.  They obeyed
with a rush, and, not to impede their onset,
Buller leapt up on to the edge of the trench
and ran forward, crying: "On, boys, on!
Break them to pieces!"

He was thus encouraging them when a
bullet pierced his heart.

"I never saw a finer death," one man told
me.  "He looked very brave and handsome
up there, outlined against the sky, the only
figure on the bank above, his helmet off, and
his face very pale and blazing with anger, and
his right arm pointing forward.  He fell down
headlong, but we never turned back until we
gave the Germans hell.  Two hours later, I
was told, the Colonel was still lying there on
his face on the edge of the trench.  Then they
turned him over and brought him in."

The second-in-command of the Patricia's,
Major Hamilton Gault, was severely wounded,
and many gallant officers fell.

The machine-guns of the Royal Canadian
Regiment inflicted fearful mortality.  Between
them and the Princess Patricia's was a gap,
fifty yards wide, into which the Germans
poured on finding it undefended, and were
smashed on both flanks, and mowed down by
scores.  On their arrival at the "Appendix,"
only forty yards from the enemy's front
trenches, they were met by a withering fire
which almost obliterated them.  A little further
south they were more successful, and from the
"Loop," where the company of the Princess
Patricia's had perished, they penetrated to
Gordon Road and beyond, and then commenced
a fierce attack to the north.  But here
a swift and stern retribution was to be exacted
from them.

A company commander, Captain Hugh
Niven, who, although already twice wounded,
was still full of valour and resolution, gathered
the remainder of his men together, some
seventy rifles in all and two machine-guns,
and, hidden behind sandbags, awaited the foe
in silence.  The order was given: "Not a
man must shoot until I give the
signal!"  Apparently the Boche was taken unawares.
The volley which blazed forth was reminiscent
of the immortal front rank fire of Lascelles'
Regiment on the Heights at Quebec.

One stalwart French-Canadian, Arseneau
by name, who had often faced wild animals in
the backwoods, burning with ardour, could not
be restrained from leaping up on the improvised
parapet and repeatedly emptying his rifle,
before the enemy could recover from his
astonishment.  His captain tells me that no
fewer than eight Germans fell to this man's
marksmanship alone in that swift encounter.
When it was over, at least one hundred of the
enemy slain lay on the ground.  Afterwards
the officer mentioned shepherded his men into
a section of trench, he himself spending the
whole of the ensuing night perambulating the
trenches, directing defences, ministering to and
encouraging and directing his men.  It was
truly an astonishing feat of physical endurance.

"We had lost so many," he said, "I felt I
ought to be on deck as long as I could crawl."  He
was still giving orders when the stretcher-bearers
lifted him out and bore him away to
the field hospital.

A gallant youth in his twenty-fourth year
was Captain Cotton, son of a Major-General,
sometime Inspector-General of the Canadian
Forces.  Cotton was ordered to take two
machine-guns and dig them in in such a
manner in the front line that they would
enfilade the enemy's trenches on the left.  If
the Germans rushed his own position, he was
to disable his guns and retire with his men.
After fighting valiantly for a time, the enemy
charged, whereupon Cotton, instead of retiring,
coolly hauled both guns out of their emplacements
and turned them on the advancing
Germans.  He and his men continued firing
until all were slain, and lay a heap of
mangled flesh about their guns.

On the edge of the craters the bodies were
seen of a stalwart Sergeant-Major of the
Mounted Rifles and two privates of the
Princess Patricia's.  Lying around them and
beneath them were the bodies of no fewer than
twelve Germans whom they had slain with
the bayonet.

.. vspace:: 2

By half-past five o'clock the enemy had
penetrated and possessed themselves of about
a mile of our front line trenches in the middle
of the arc they had attacked with such
demoniac force.  The trenches south of Hooge
for 1,000 yards we still held, and also the front
east of Hill 60.  After nightfall the Germans,
renewing their bombardment, pushed on 700
yards further towards Zillebeke, and proceeded
to entrench themselves firmly.  For the
moment their artillery had won them an
advantage, but the price they had paid was at
least as terrible as our own--how terrible we
shall not know until the close of the War, and
the German official records or the German
survivors of this battle speak and tell us.

.. figure:: images/img-032.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: (Photograph--street in Ypres)

   (Photograph--street in Ypres)

I write in haste, surrounded by the terrible
evidences of a bloody struggle.  It would be
impossible within the limits of time and space
to recount even a tithe of the outstanding
deeds of heroism of yesterday's battle, which
waged without cessation until nine at night.
Albeit one more incident I must relate.  It is
the story of the Rev. Gilles Wilken, a parson
from Medicine Hat, on the Bow River.  At
the outbreak of war Wilken flung aside his
surplice and enlisted as a private.  He came
to England with his battalion, where his talent
for ministration and good works could not be
concealed, and he was promptly, when a
vacancy occurred, appointed chaplain.  Having
on this day, in Sanctuary Wood, done all he
could for the dead and dying, Wilken felt it
his duty to strike a blow of sterner sort for
his country.  He seized a rifle, wielding it
with accuracy and effect as long as his
ammunition lasted, and then went after the
Germans with a bayonet.  After one
particularly fierce thrust the weapon broke.
Whereupon this astounding parson, baring his
arms, flew at one brawny Boche with his fists,
and the last seen of him he was lying prone
and overpowered.

.. vspace:: 2

The outstanding feature of the day was,
however, not the numerous traits of individual
valour.  It is the marvellous tact and moral
impetus of the officers and non-commissioned
officers, and the discipline and cohesion of
the men which I find evokes most praise.
When one was struck down and unable to
give or receive orders, another took his place
automatically, and was obeyed implicitly and
instantly.  In one battalion only two officers
survived.  In some other battalions the losses
have been very severe.  One lost three-quarters
of its strength.  But the morale of all ranks
was unimpaired, and the troops, who had
endured this day an experience which might
well weaken the purpose of the strongest and
stoutest, were fit and ready at dawn on the
morrow to undertake a counter-attack.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   \II.

.. vspace:: 2

*June 4th.*

.. vspace:: 1

That Friday night, while the enemy was
preparing to hold his new front, and the
stretcher-bearers and Red Cross workers on
both sides were bringing in their wounded and
dead, General Sir Julian Byng, the Corps
Commander, was planning a counter-attack to
recover the ground which had been lost.  This
attack was delayed for some hours, owing to
the necessity for assembling artillery in such
force as to silence the enemy, who still
maintained a vigorous and occasionally an intense
bombardment.

The advance was timed for six o'clock in
the morning, but still the barrage did not lift,
and it was nearly half-past nine when our
troops moved forward in earnest.  These
troops belonged to the First and Third
Divisions, but the brunt of the fighting
was borne by survivors of the 7th and 8th
Brigades of the latter Division, assisted by
two companies of the King's Royal Rifles, an
Imperial regiment which had been serving in
the Salient to the left of the Canadian troops.

A bombardment of a vigour almost equal
to that of the Germans of the previous day
created a shelter for our advancing battalions.
The enemy guns replied, and at one time the
spectacle was witnessed of a double barrage
of appalling intensity.  None the less, the
Canadians pushed on, and after fighting all day
succeeded in reaching a portion of their old
front-line trenches in the northern section.  On
the way thither they came across numbers of
enemy dead lying about unburied.  But the
trenches were battered to pieces, and our troops
were not in sufficient strength to hold on until
the works could be reconstructed.  The same
was true of the battalions of the 8th Brigade,
who advanced south of Maple Copse and east
of Warrington Avenue, although the 49th
Battalion, which had lost its commanding
officer, Colonel Baker, struggled valiantly for a
time to maintain itself.  The upshot was that
we were forced back to a new front line of
trenches near Zillebeke.

The losses of these two days have been
grievous--some 7,000 killed and wounded.  It
is to-day known that the commander of the
heroic Third Canadian Division, Major-General
Mercer, has fallen.  Just as the Huns were
making their advance at half-past one o'clock,
the General was seen supporting himself against
a parapet at the entrance of a dug-out known
as the Tube, suffering from shell shock, and
there beyond doubt he met his death, and
there his body lies buried.  A brigade
commander and a battalion commander were taken
prisoners.  Two other colonels, Buller and
Baker, have been slain.

The earth is all torn, seared, and fretted
hereabouts, but a surprising amount of
timber still stands.  All through those two
fierce days' fighting, wounded men were crawling
about or lying motionless for hours, either
helpless or to avoid observation.  One man
told me he had spent two nights on his back
in No Man's Land without food, drink, or
succour.  Another was thrice buried by the
effects of the much-vaunted minenwerfer
shell--which ploughs up the surrounding earth--and
thrice dug out by a passing officer.
Machine-guns were repeatedly buried, and then rapidly
and diligently excavated and brought by our
gallant fellows again into action, much to the
enemy's amazement and discomfiture.

It is now Sunday afternoon at Corps
Headquarters.

As I write, staff officers hurry to and fro;
occasionally a general or a battalion commander
dashes by, all deeply preoccupied and intent
on the business in hand.  Some of them have
not slept for three days.  The troops who
have borne the brunt are now going into rest
billets.

As to these two days' struggle, if you were
to take all the actions along the British front
from the very beginning, there is none that
illustrates so vividly, so intensely, the whole
character of the fighting in this War.  It
combines the essential features of all, with the
exception of poison gas.  Brief, compact, and
murderous, it was by far the greatest artillery
ordeal to which the Canadians have yet been
subjected.  As an exhibition of German
frightfulness on the one hand, and British
steadfastness on the other, it is unsurpassed in the
War.  "Comparable only to Verdun," is the
comment to me of a distinguished commander,
when I mentioned the fury of the German
bombardment.

Down the road leading from the battle
front to the divisional headquarters appears
the head of a long column of mud-stained,
grimy-faced Canadians, with rusty, tattered
accoutrements, their heads in the air, still
keeping step, and singing--actually
singing--with a sort of wild humour and abandon.
And one catches the sound, not of the "Maple
Leaf for Ever," or "My Little Grey Home in
the West," but of the latest London music-hall
ditty--the one a famous comedian chants
nightly at the Alhambra:

   |  "If you were the only girl in the world,
   |  And I were the only boy!"
   |

But make no mistake about it--retribution
is in the air.  Look into the men's eyes, and
their glances tell the same tale.  The men are
excited--they are feverish; all this that you
see is reaction.  They know, every man of
them, the game is only just begun.  The
question is: How long will the German be
permitted to hold on to his winnings?  I have
just had a brief interview with the Corps
commander, Sir Julian Byng, who gave me
this message:--

.. vspace:: 2

"I am proud of the Canadians under my
command.  Their behaviour has been
magnificent.  I have never known, not even at
Vimy Ridge, a fiercer or more deadly barrage,
nor have I ever seen any troops fight with
more earnestness, courage, endurance, and
cheerfulness.  It is regrettable that our losses
are heavy, but the slight penetration of our
line will cost the Germans dear."

.. vspace:: 2

Yes; it is possible that the battle is only
just begun.  The next few hours may reveal
much, but it will reveal no secret of German
strategy for which we shall not be fully
prepared.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`*June 7th.*`:

.. class:: center large bold

   \III.

.. vspace:: 2

*June 7th.*

.. vspace:: 1

It is all a question of artillery preparation.
The enemy momentarily holds a large portion
of the ground formerly held by us.  It is only
a few acres, when all is said, but it is as
precious to us as our life-blood.  We have
been given a charge to keep, and the honour
of Canada is involved in our keeping it
intact.  Evidently the Hun commander had
convinced himself that here was a vulnerable
point in the British line, and he delivered a
ruthless onslaught.  It was carefully planned
and meditated; this is clearly demonstrated
by the enormous weight of metal, which must
have been accumulating for weeks.  The
bombardment of June 2nd was without a parallel
even in this shell-devastated region, and
yesterday he repeated it.  Four mines were
exploded directly under our front trenches at
Hooge, and he pressed forward a few steps
further and captured the ruins of the hamlet.

Two short years ago the Chateau of Hooge
and all the land hereabouts belonged to a
Belgian nobleman, the Baron de Vinck, who
dwelt here with his family and dependents.
Now his chateau is as immortal as Hougoumont.
Thrilling scenes have been enacted
in this park--the flower of the chivalry of
England and France have perished in its
defence.  Hooge was on October 30th, 1914,
the headquarters of the 1st and 2nd Divisions.
On that day General Lomax was wounded,
General Munro stunned, and six staff officers
killed.  It was once also the headquarters of
Byng's 3rd Cavalry Division.  On this very
ground that we are now again fighting to
recover, on November 6th, 1914, the 1st and
2nd Life Guards and the Blues advanced to
make their never-to-be-forgotten stand against
the Prussian Guards, who fought under their
Emperor's eye.

It was to Hooge that were borne the dead
bodies of Fitzclarence, Cavendish, Wellesley,
Wyndham, Cadogan, Gordon-Lennox, Hay,
Kinnaird, Bruce, and Fraser, and not far from
there they are chiefly interred.  Close at hand
also is the grave of the brave young Prince
Maurice of Battenberg.

It has long since--chateau, hamlet, and
wood--been smashed to fragments by their
guns; but we continued to hold it, and now
it is theirs.  It is of no strategical significance,
perhaps, but it brings them nearer to Ypres,
and the graves of so many of our heroic dead.

From the hill where I am stationed, the
line of the new German trenches is clearly
visible, even if it were not indicated by their
shell-fire, which just now continues particularly
hot in the neighbourhood of St. Eloi.  Our
line has been slightly indented, but the high
ground to the east was already theirs, from
which they could belch forth all their artillery
resources, and it is difficult to see what
strategical advantage they have gained from their
late bloody effort.  From all I can gather, the
cost to them in casualties, as well as ammunition,
has been very great--much greater than
was first supposed.

Earlier in the war the shelling I am now
witnessing at the turn in the loop which
encloses this blood-stained amphitheatre of
three thousand acres would have seemed a
serious bombardment.  Now it is merely an
artillery diversion.  Twenty thousand Canadian
soldiers, hidden in what seems an absolutely
deserted plain, are looking upwards at those
great white or yellow puffs of smoke with
quiet unconcern, awaiting the appointed hour.
For the present, the Boche has done his worst.
He has given a violent tug at the loop, and
if he has shortened it by a few inches, it is
possible it has also made it stronger.  It has
cost him thousands of lives and yielded him
a few battered trenches and a brick-heap.

Elsewhere on the British front numerous
raids, adroitly planned by us, and almost
invariably successful, have been the order
of the day.  At one point an enormous
white placard has been exhibited on the
enemy parapet:

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

ENGLISCH--TAKE WARNUNG BY
KITCHENER'S FATE.
GERMANY IS INVINCIBLE.

.. vspace:: 2

It is impossible to reproduce the character
or the spelling, both of which were atrocious.
This was brought in by a raiding party, and
provoked infinite amusement amongst our men.

.. figure:: images/img-045.jpg
   :figclass: white-space-pre-line
   :align: center
   :alt: Map--Ypres and area

   Map--Ypres and area





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   \IV.

.. vspace:: 2

*June 14th.*

.. vspace:: 1

The expected has happened.  The Canadians,
chafing over the results of the fierce
German offensive of the past ten days,
successfully carried through in the early
hours of yesterday morning a counter-attack
which restored every rod of valuable ground
they had lost.  Observatory Ridge, the whole
of Armagh Wood, and the uplands to the
south, including Mount Sorel, are again firmly
in our hands.

It was a most brilliant feat of arms.  The
night was wet, cold, and thoroughly disagreeable,
but the men were in the highest possible
spirits at the prospect of an advance to recover
their old position.  This time our artillery was
fully prepared, and at 1.30 o'clock in the
morning, under cover of a heavy fire, the
advance began.  A fresh Canadian division
had been sent into the Salient, and there
remained a mixed brigade of those Canadian
mounted troops who have figured in the
recent fighting.  General Lipsett, the new
divisional commander appointed to succeed
General Mercer, deferred taking up his
command in order to lead his old brigade into
action.

To three battalions the attack was mainly
entrusted.  A fourth battalion to the right,
opposite Hill 60, provided a diversion for
the enemy, so as to protect the attacking
battalions from being enfiladed, while on
the extreme left, where there was less ground
to be retaken, a fifth battalion advanced.  The
orders were to take three lines of trenches,
and to establish bomb posts in the fourth.

These four trenches were (1) the new
German front line which they had recently
made, (2) our old reserve trench, (3) our old
support trench, and (4) our old front line.

The troops pressed forward, the Germans
felling back sullenly under the impetuosity
of the attack.  Some fierce fighting took
place here and there in the territory south
of Warrington Avenue, especially for the
possession of Observatory Ridge, but the
enemy seemed helpless before the fury of
our impetus.  Early in the engagement, two
of his guns mounted on high ground south
of the famous "Appendix" fell into our
hands, and we then learned from men
captured there that the Germans actually had
planned a further attack upon our lines at
that point, to take place at 6.30 that very
morning.  Owing to circumstances over which
they had no control, it has been postponed.

"My battalion," narrates one officer
who greatly distinguished himself this day,
"went forward in four waves, two under
Major Kemp and two under Major McCuaig.
The first of the trenches was taken without
opposition.  It had been practically obliterated
by our artillery.  While we were taking this
trench, the artillery lifted until 1.50, to give us
time to reach the second trench, which we also
took with little opposition.  Major Kemp was
hit before we reached the first trench.  The
third trench was taken by the first three
waves, supported by the fourth."  But it was
here that opposition was encountered.  A
Boche machine-gun on the left had been
dragged up from below, and ably handled by
a Boche sergeant, whose face was streaming
with blood, enfiladed our line in a most
disastrous manner.  Four of our advancing
officers were struck down, and for a few
moments it looked as though that single
weapon was going to check this part of the
line.

"Silence that Hun machine!  Put it out
of action!" roared one of our officers.  And a
machine-gun officer, Lieutenant Hamilton, ran
backwards with a single private, armed with
bombs, and charged the Boche offender in the
dark, guided only by his own fire.  Their first
bomb killed the sergeant, but another sprang
in his place, and the crew had to be beaten off
with fists and the butt of a revolver.  The
gun was captured, mounted, and trained on
the enemy.

Meanwhile Lieutenant Giveen, the bombing
officer, having been killed, his place was
filled by Lieutenant Saunders, who led a
bombing party up the communication trench
to the fourth and foremost trench, which was
the front Canadian line of ten days ago.
Having rapidly issued instructions to his men
to establish blocks, the gallant Saunders could
not refrain from raising a cheer of triumph.
At that very moment he was struck down,
probably by a bomb.  He had led the way,
and others followed, and a red rocket, sent up
by Major McCuaig's orders, announced to
those behind that the final objective of the
counter-attack had been reached.  In less
than ten minutes a party of engineers and a
company of pioneers, armed with picks and
shovels, were on the spot, and the work of
digging in--of "consolidating"--began.  All
this while another force had been toiling madly
at digging out the third line of trenches.
Communication was established at dawn with
the battalions to right and left, who had also
advanced under the same difficulties, and
suffering heavy losses, which were to be heavier
during that terrible day when the Germans
began their bombardment.  The rain continued
to descend pitilessly, there was nothing
visible anywhere but a sea and watersheds of
mud, ploughed and churned by shells and
bombs, and strewn with corpses and the litter
of a battlefield.  When the men sat down to
rest, their hips were sunk in heavy brown
slime.  Yet even under such conditions the
spirit of the men was amazing.  As one of
their officers has declared--

"Even men who had joined as reinforcements
a month ago behaved like old and
seasoned soldiers."

A Vancouver officer bears similar testimony.

"When we reached the German front
line," he states, "there was no trench left.
We met with no opposition, the Germans at
first seeming to be too dazed by the heavy fire
to which they had been subjected to do anything.
The ground, as we advanced, was in a
frightful state, all in holes, which were made
the more trying by the pouring rain.  We
should never have got through had it not
been for the splendid work of the artillery, for
progress through this ploughed up mud was
slow.  We took some fifty to sixty prisoners.
All the men were keen as mustard.  Some of
the newly-joined had never been in a serious
engagement before, but they were just as
steady as the old hands."

Another says: "The trenches were in a
sad state, and conditions generally bad.  The
men had to sleep anyhow in the open.  We
lost pretty severely, in coming up, through
shells.  When at length we advanced, we
went forward so rapidly that we were through
the first trench and up the hill before the
Germans realised what was happening.  Our
losses here were comparatively slight.  At
length we reached our old front line, where
we attacked with bombs and bayonets.  The
Germans made an effort at a counter-attack,
but it was easily handled by our bombers.
We were relieved that night.  The ground,
I should add, was in an awful state.  One of
our men who had sunk deeply in the mud
during the advance was discovered still tightly
held in the mire afterwards, when two men
pulled him out."

Another officer of the same battalion said
that the bombing battalion on their right did
its work very effectively, and kept the Germans
on Hill 60 well occupied.  After reaching the
objective, this battalion had some stiff fighting
on the extreme right, the Germans
counter-attacking with bombs.  But soon the old
British line was made tenable with sandbags.
The Germans came back twice, and had to be
bombed out of the German front line, and
even then some came back again.  After the
last trench had been taken, the Germans
shelled it heavily, and there were many
casualties.  The men behaved with great gallantry,
and were crazy to reach the German trenches.
At one time four different men of the battalion
went out of the trench after a wounded
comrade, and all were killed in the attempt to
save him.  The wounded man was
subsequently brought in at night.

"Lord, it was fine," relates still another
officer who was in the thick of the fighting.
"I could feel that terrible fretting of the past
week just oozing out as the boys jumped the
parapets and smashed across to where our old
first line had been.  I don't think anything
could have stopped them.  I didn't get in
with the first bunch, because my company was
held on the edge, watching for the counter-attack,
if it came too soon for our fellows to
make a stand.

"When we got going we went through
the Germans like a knife through cheese.
They didn't know what to do with us but
throw down their rifles and bolt, or hold up
their hands.  They said we ran.  You should
have seen them skedoodle for home and ma,
what didn't throw themselves on the ground
and beg to be taken.  We went clean to the
old line, and captured some hundreds of
prisoners.  Our artillery had kept them from
doing much in the digging-in line, and so we
had a chance to slam them good and plenty.
And you bet we did.

"Then we had to take ours.  They had
the range of us to a nicety, and they gave us
particular hell with shell-fire for days before
and during the assault.  When we went up
and took over the line from the assaulting
troops, we had to take another dose of iron
which the Huns put on while they were getting
their counter-attack ready.  But the counter-attack
never came off--at least, not what we'd
call an attack.  Our artillery got them in the
belt and cut them up too bad to want to come
to close steel with us.  So we settled down in
a day or two as if there hadn't been even a
brush, and Fritz was glad to let it go at that.

"During nearly all the last turn-in the rain
poured down in torrents off and on, and you
can imagine the state the lads were in, with
freshly dug trenches and everything being
blown to smithereens by shell-fire.  Towards
the last our trenches consisted of shell holes
connected by ditches and carpeted with water
and some Flanders mud.  If a shell burst
within a hundred yards, we had to get someone
to scrape the plaster from our eyes before we
knew if we were hurt.  You couldn't tell a
captain from a Tommy, and it didn't matter
much just then, since all we could do was to
lie low and hang tight.

"But we did it, we did it.  We got even
with them for trying to wipe out our old
battalion.  Why, the Huns were lying so thick
when we drove through that we had to jump
over them all the way, but we got 'home' at
last, and 'home' we mean to stay."

Thus was trench after trench retaken, the
Canadians sending up a mighty cheer when
they discovered that a great quantity of stores
which they had left there ten days before, half
buried by the force of minenwerfer shells, had
been undiscovered or at least unremoved by
the enemy, and were practically intact.  Three
German officers and 130 men were made
prisoners.  Another enemy officer was
subsequently discovered wounded in the
intervening territory and brought in.  The utmost
frankness was expressed by these prisoners as
to the result of the engagement, one going so
far as to say:--

"We knew that it was a point of pride
with you, and that you would never stop until
you had got back your trenches.  I knew it--but
I had to obey orders--and--here I am!"

In the progress through the darkness and
in the hand-to-hand fighting of the day, the
struggling up the slimy slopes of Observatory
Ridge under heavy shell-fire, many brave
officers and men fell.  One who will be sadly
missed is Major Gibson, of the Royal Canadian
Highlanders.  In addition to his other qualities,
Gibson enjoyed fame as the only man in the
Expeditionary Force who wore whiskers.  He
was a Scottish-American, who had seen service
with the American army in the Philippines,
where he was wounded in the jaw and throat,
necessitating a growth of beard.  On his
mother's side he was a Macdonald, and very
proud of his connection with that clan.  A
fighter born, Gibson enlisted at the beginning
of the War, earning his commission and
subsequent promotion by sheer merit.  On the
eve of battle he begged that his company
should be placed on the right, for, said he:--

"The Macdonalds have always been on
the right since the '45."  And the right this
morning was a post of danger.  Gibson was
heard cheering his troops on in the darkness,
and continually pressed on always in the van.
When he reached the first parapet of our old
trenches he cried: "Come on, boys, home at
last!"  That moment he was fatally hit by a
bullet.

There was a famous race between rival
battalions to see which should first reach a
certain well-known point which I may call
Rutland House.  Although under heavy fire,
the men's zeal could not be checked.  On they
pounded, panting in the darkness, until a gleam
of red fire shot up, and the hoarse voice of
a brawny Canadian Highlander was heard
calling:--

"We're in first, you beggars o' the --th!"

As showing the spirit of the men, there is
the case of two wounded soldiers hit by the
same bullet, one in the face and the other in
the arm.  They were quarrelling as they lay
there on the ground side by side.  An officer
approached and asked what was the matter.
The bone of contention was the bullet.  One
argued warmly that he ought to have it as a
souvenir, as he was the first to be hit by it, but
the other contended that it was his by rights,
as it stayed in him.

On the whole, the Germans put up a poor
fight that first day of the counter-attack, and
allowed themselves to be taken prisoners by
scores.  A batch of eight was put in charge
of a corporal, with orders to conduct them to
the rear.  The little procession moved
backward, and was seen by other Germans,
scattered about in the supporting trenches, who
promptly threw away their rifles and joined it,
so that instead of being depleted when it
reached battalion headquarters, the astonished
corporal found that he had nearly twice as
many prisoners as he had set out with.

When Major Kemp was wounded, and he
and a wounded private were making their way
down a trench, they heard a movement in a
dug-out.  Neither had any weapon.  Out
came a German.  Kemp seized him, took his
rifle from him, and gave the private the
bayonet.  With the German rifle, and his
companion with the bayonet, Kemp took six
more prisoners.  Thus, when they arrived to
have their wounds dressed, they had a
following of seven prisoners.

Once an unarmed German private advanced
towards two of our men, and, shaking his fist
in the direction of his compatriots, badly begged
for a British rifle that he might fight on our
side.  A Canadian officer, since mortally
wounded, Lieutenant Kitson, was invited by
two German privates to enter their dug-out,
where he found four other Germans, who, in
broken English, begged to surrender.

Later that same day, when the enemy
barrage behind and bombardment in front
became hotter, so that the supports we wanted
could not come up easily, one brave officer,
Lieutenant Richardson, who had received his
promotion from the ranks, took charge, with
only three men, of a whole line of trenches.
"You can count on me, sir, to keep them," he
said to his colonel; and he held on to the
trenches amidst a most terrific shelling the
whole of that day.  The supports came up at
last, but just too late: the brave Richardson
had disappeared--it is feared for ever.





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   \V.

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*June 15th.*

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In the observation post at my side is a
young engineer who three years ago visited
Belgium with his sister.  They spent the night
at Ypres, and the next day strolled out to
Zillebeke, and at Zillebeke Meer they got into
a boat and rowed for an hour in the shade of
the willows (the vestiges of the boat are there
yet amongst the rushes; it is known to many
of our soldiers, and the bottom of the lake is
paved with splintered metal), and they went
on to the old mill at Verbranden.  On their left
they noticed a bare mound or hillock--perhaps
a hundred feet high--not a natural feature,
they were told, but made by man's hands
from the cuttings of the Ypres-Comines Canal.

"We thought of climbing it for the view.
But the day was warm, and we changed our
minds and walked back to the city along the
banks of the canal.  We lunched beneath
the trees yonder, close to that little chapel.
Exactly where we sat are now our front
trenches, and that bare, lonely mound is one of
the most famous places in the world--Hill 60."

Just one mile east of Zillebeke is Sanctuary
Wood, full of poplars, elms, and maples, and
below it to the south is another wood which
our soldiers call Armagh Wood.  All this is
just within the Salient.  It is all low-lying
ground, save here and there a ridge or
mound--for the enemy has all the high ground to
the east--that low ridge of hills lying some
150 feet above the level of Ypres, which is
only fifty feet above sea-level.  The boundaries
of the Salient are not imaginary; they are real
boundaries, for all that they lie hidden.  A
deep and narrow trench encompasses the
territory, which juts out half a mile east, but
south of Hooge, and three-quarters of a mile
due west of the Chateau of Herenthage, the
scene in happier days of garden fêtes and
rustic merry-making.

Yesterday, pushing along past Zillebeke
lake, the supporting battalions came through
the deadly barrage to relieve the weary troops
who had spent the whole of Tuesday in
constant fighting.  "It was a magnificent
thing," one of their colonels told me, "to watch
those fellows moving on past three barrages,
many of them hit and stopping a while to
bind up their wounds, and then up and at it
again, like dare-devils that nothing could stop.
I have never--never seen anything finer."

.. figure:: images/img-064.jpg
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   :alt: (Photograph--street in Ypres)

   (Photograph--street in Ypres)

Once the relieving force was well within
the recovered British trenches, the bombardment
of the latter grew fierce, and in those
sections of the line where our old outposts had
not been reached, much desperate fighting
took place in the ensuing forty-eight hours.
The tide of battle flowed this way or that, as
hill or trench was taken by us or retaken by
the enemy.  One officer had advanced his
machine-gun in a favourable position to
prevent enfilading, in case the Germans should
return to this particular trench.  The Germans
did return.  A shell lifted the gun clean out
over the officer's head, and he lay stunned for
a while on the ground.  When he recovered
consciousness, the Germans were behind him.
In a moment, with a little assistance, he had it
working briskly in the opposite direction, and
was hard at it, when a shell gave him a mortal
wound.

I was told to-day of one gunner who,
thoroughly exhausted, went to sleep by his
gun, and was actually not awakened by
Wednesday's terrific Boche artillery onslaught.
When the enemy pushed through, he still
slept.  Two of them, thinking him dead, laid
hands on his gun and proceeded to work it,
when he awoke at last and realised the
situation.  He sprang upon them in fury, and was
in close conflict with them when some of our
men came up, giving chase to a platoon of
flying Huns.  The subsequent effectiveness
of his weapon our gunner put down to his
having got forty winks of slumber at a time
when the enemy was having everything his
own way!

I have mentioned one American as having
distinguished himself in this fighting in
Armagh Wood.  He was not alone amongst
his countrymen.  Major Stewart was formerly
an officer in the United States cavalry.  He
fought hard and well, and died with his face
to the foe.  Yet another was Captain Stanley
Wood, of Missouri, who had served in the
Fifth New York Regiment.  He became
interested in aviation, and joined the Flying
Corps earlier in the war, until a commission
was offered him with the Royal Highlanders
of Montreal.  "Wood was a fine fellow," one
of his fellow-officers said to me, "and we all
hoped great things of him.  And he has not
disappointed us, for he died in fine fashion."

What nobler epitaph for a soldier could be uttered?

I have just seen some significant documents
captured from the dug-out which served
as headquarters of a German grenadier regiment.

It is admitted that the regiment had
already lost heavily in a heroic defence against
the furious counter-attacks for this position
wrested from the enemy, and in the murderous
artillery fire.  This is sterling testimony to
the effective work of our artillery.  The
document continues:--

"The fighting is not yet finished, and the
enemy will not cease attempting to regain
Doppelhoche 60, which is so important, but it
is a point of honour for the regiment to retain
this position.

"Faith in the superiority which we have
shown hitherto will enable us to carry out this
difficult task."

Stress is laid upon the necessity to collect
all the débris after the fight.  It is urgently
enjoined that search be made for the recovery
of "boots of all kinds, all sorts of weapons,
and parts of their entrenching tools, steel
helmets, leather equipment, cartridge pouches,
all kinds of weapons for close fighting, belts,
tents, material of all kinds, haversacks, tunics,
trousers, and sandbags.  These goods are of
the most decisive importance to the final
success of our great cause."

It is ordered that "the enemy's dead will
be divested of articles of woollen clothing and
boots."

Special instructions are given to guard
against the deterioration of German fighting
material.  "This must be brought back from
the first position and its communication
trenches as soon as possible.  The exceeding
disorder of the second line must be at once
thoroughly cleared up."  It is to be feared
that the co-operation of our artillery has in
this instance hardly effected the desired result.

One sentence conveys what the Germans
really think of the men opposite to them in
the Ypres Salient more eloquently than a
column of Teutonic abuse: "In view of the
enemy's characteristics, we have to expect a
strong attack at any time."  And six days
from the date upon which these words were
written the strong attack came.  And the
issue of the whole struggle is that the integrity
of the Salient has been valiantly maintained.
I may here quote the lines written concerning
the Canadians' part in the Second Battle of
Ypres:

   |  Mother, perchance thou hadst a tender doubt,
   |  Not of our love, or strength, or will,
   |  But of our gift for battle and our skill
   |  To stay the foeman's desp'rate fury out.

   |  If so, against this doubt let Ypres plead;
   |  We gained, yea--inch by inch--our little glory, too,
   |  Helping the store of pride we share with you,
   |  Proving us also of the Island breed.





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   \VI.

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*June 16th.*

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Forty-eight hours after the relieving
battalions went in they in turn were relieved.
For two days and two nights they had been
subjected to a terrific hammering, and few of
either officers or men had had a moment's
sleep.  When the respite came, many of them
on the way back sank down in the mud of
what three days before had been No Man's
Land and slept peacefully, utterly worn out.
Several told me that, when they awoke, it was
to find an equally exhausted slumbering Boche
a few paces away.  These stragglers continue
to come in, some of them, wholly unwounded,
having been for days wandering about,
virtually without food, and drinking only such
water as they find in the rain-drenched ditches.

A leading article in the *Times*, which has
just come in, truly says:--

"It was undoubtedly the hardest action
fought on Belgian soil since the Second Battle
of Ypres, more than a year ago."

As for our men, a day has made a
wonderful difference to those who have
emerged unscathed from the shock of battle.
Not soon shall I forget the spectacle which
greeted me an hour ago when one Scottish
Canadian battalion passed me in the road
on the way to neighbouring rest billets.  A
stalwart band of pipers marched behind a
sleek regimental goat, who ever and anon
shook his horns in conscious pride.  The pipers
droned "Bonnie Dundee," and on came the
long column of troopers, still unkempt and
unshorn and in strangely fitting headgear--for
scarce a man had kept the bonnet he had
gone out in--but each with a dogged,
invincible air that those forty-eight hours' hell
in the trenches had failed to subdue.  There
was a terrible thinning of the ranks, and
there were some chargers without riders.  I
followed them to their new camp.  One other
battalion had already arrived, and some of the
officers, taking advantage of the sudden spell
of sunshine, were already playing tennis.  It
was a strange scene.  Our aeroplanes had
come out to reconnoitre, and numerous puffs of
smoke high overhead showed that they were
the target for the German anti-aircraft guns.
Other guns boomed forth in the distance, but
otherwise amidst these green and peaceful
surroundings there was little enough to
suggest the tragedy of war.

"Thirty--love!" called out Colonel
Rattray, of the 10th Battalion, lowering his
racquet at the end of a fine rally.  You
would never imagine that this clean-cut,
debonair figure had just emerged from the
jaws of death and the mouth of hell.

The kilted Canadians were in sight of their
billets when a slim young officer, pushing a
bicycle, stepped off the road with his
companion to allow them, their triumphant goat
and their pipers, to pass.  Not a man of these
battle-scarred heroes recognised him.  I am
sure they would have raised a cheer if they
had known.

For this slender young officer, his breast
covered with many-hued bits of ribbon, was
His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,
a captain in the Guards.





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   \VII.

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*June 23rd.*

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Exactly one week after I had watched our
scarred and shaken but still valiant Canadian
soldiers on their way out of the trenches of
Maple Copse and Sanctuary Wood, after the
third fiercest struggle that has taken place in
the Ypres Salient, I stood and marked the
passage of the men of the relieving battalions.
It was in the chief street of a little town
whose church and houses were cruelly
disfigured by German shells.  The sound of
drum and fife was heard, and the whole
populace ran to doors and windows.  On
every lip the cry was heard--

"The Guards--the Guards!  They are
coming out!"

On they came in column of route, these
tall, stern, bronzed men, chins up, eyes front,
jaws set, marching with all the firmness and
precision of a dress parade, marching as if the
eyes of His Majesty the King were upon
them, as I had seen them march in scarlet
tunics and monstrous busbies in Hyde Park,
at Aldershot, on the Horse Guards Parade,
the same men, and yet, alas, not the same.  You
forgot--nay, you did not see--their shabby,
faded, stained khaki uniforms, the shapeless
steel basins on their heads, the untidy linen
sacks slung on their shoulders; you only saw
the men, the brave, strong men, the triumph
of training, the justification of discipline, the
vindication of the old despised Imperial
military system, the glory of the British
Army--the Guards.

No wonder eyes gleamed and cheeks
mantled in that little Flemish town, which
has seen so many units of the British Army
pass and repass the mouth of hell, whose lips
are the hitherward parallel roadways and
whose gnashing teeth are the front trenches.
Six days before the same scene had been
enacted when the cry ran--

"The Guards!  They are going in!"

And they went in--the Coldstreams and
the Grenadiers--to take over the trenches
from the Canadians, to delve and sweat,
carrying loads of ammunition on their backs,
crawling into No Man's Land, laying mines,
shooting Germans or braining them with the
butts of their rifles, or treating them to the
cold steel, as imperturbable as you see them
now--it being all in the day's work.  The
popularity of the Guards arouses no jealousy
in the other divisions.  "We don't grudge
'em what they get," remarked a sergeant in
a line regiment; "they work hard, and they
deserve it.  They've got a big name to keep up."

And yet it was one of these same Guards
who an hour later, with more emotion than
I would have thought credible, waving his
brawny hand backwards towards the line, said:

"The Canadians--yes, sir, perhaps we have
something they haven't got.  But--excuse
the liberty, sir--by God, we take off our hats
to them!  I tell you what, sir, they're MEN!
They saved the Salient!"





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   EPILOGUE.

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YPRES, *June 24th.*

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*Fuit Hupra*!  The ancient city has at last
crumbled into dust; but if she is blotted out
amongst the cities of Belgium, she will live
for ever in the hearts and the history of
Canada and the British Empire.  She
belongs--her halls and churches, her streets and
houses, all her people and her past--henceforth
to us and those who come after us.  She
is, spiritually, as much a part of the British
Empire as Vancouver or Toronto.  Her
quaint memorials will be cherished by us; her
story will be told by our children's children.
She is a city of the dead--our British dead.

It is strange that it should be reserved
for Ypres to play such a prominent part
on the stage of this war.  For the city was
itself but a symbol of a past greatness and a
melancholy survivor of centuries-old tragedy.
No town of its size in Europe--no town of
ten times its size--has suffered more.

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
Ypres was the metropolis of Flanders,
taking the lead of Bruges and Ghent.  In
1267, in a petition to Pope Innocent IV.,
the aldermen estimated the population at
200,000 souls.  It possessed 4,000 looms, and
counted seven parish churches.  Then was
built the vast and splendid Drapers' Guild
Hall, the most remarkable secular monument
of the Middle Ages.  Merchants from all over
Europe had counting-houses within its
territory.  The Kings of France and England
and the Emperors of Germany granted
special privileges to the men of Ypres who
came to trade in their realms.

Then came ruinous and bloody wars
against the Counts of Flanders and against
the Kings of France; came civil dissensions,
riots, and massacres.  After being besieged
by English troops under Richard II. in 1383,
the town found its suburbs destroyed, and its
industrial population terribly depleted by
exile.  In the following century it was visited
by repeated misfortunes, and in the sixteenth
it became the scene of religious persecution,
massacres, and pillage.  In 1566 Ypres
was sacked by a mob, and the same fate
befell it in 1578.  It was used as a fortress
against the Spaniards, and when it fell,
after a siege of eight months, the population
had dwindled to 5,000 souls, and within
its walls all was in ruins.  Sieges and
bombardments continued at intervals until,
at the French Revolution, Ypres fell into the
hands of the troops of the Convention, and
once more--"for the last time," says the local
historian--became a victim of violence and
destruction.  Alas, not the last!

Briefly, that is the tale of Ypres,
relentlessly pursued by misfortune.  And yet,
despite all the city has endured, it fronted the
world bravely and even with an imposing
aspect, repairing the ravages of war with
patience and fortitude.

This time is it possible that this noble city
should rise again?  Its pride--the glorious
Guild Hall--the mediæval churches and
mansions are all but level with the ground.
There is scarce a single house in the city
whose walls are undamaged, and most of them
are mere heaps of bricks and mortar.

I have just made a tour of the streets,
accompanied by a young Canadian engineer.
It is a desert whose silence is only broken
by the thunder of guns, for the Germans are
bombarding again.  Occasionally a 4.5 shell
crashes perilously near, or a shrapnel explodes
over our heads, and instinctively we dart into
cover.  But for these reminders of a savage
and felon present we might be walking in a
city buried like Pompeii or Herculaneum, and
now exhumed to display to curious eyes the
crumbling memorials of a remote and peaceful past.

My companion reminds me, as we pass the
convent of the Irish Nuns of Ypres, that the
Princess Patricia's carried their colours through
Ypres, and that while they halted here one of
their officers quoted some lines of the famous
ballad:

   |  In the cloisters of Ypres a banner is swaying,
   |  And by it a pale, weeping maiden is praying.

There have been, in dreams, many pale,
weeping maidens praying beside that banner
wrought by the royal Princess Patricia.  God
grant soon that the prayers of all women be
heard!





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   APPENDIX.

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   \I.

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Hooghe.--The Baron Gaston de Vinck,
Belgian ex-Senator and Burgomaster of
Zillebeke, writes me that the name and proper
orthography is the Chateau de la Hooghe.
"All has been blown up by dynamite and
burnt.  My fine collection of antiquities of
great value, my furniture, pictures, and family
portraits, all have perished.  The chateau was
built in 1721: my family acquired the estate
in 1740, and since then six generations have
dwelt there.  I know with what martial glory
on my old and beloved lands your compatriots
have covered themselves.  Of this, I and those
who shall come after me, will keep an
imperishable memory."

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   \II.

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GENERAL MERCER'S DEATH.--Lieutenant
Gooderham, the General's aide-de-camp, now
a prisoner in Germany, writes: "I was beside
my beloved general when he was killed.  He
lay on the battlefield for two days, suffering
from shell shock, until picked up by a German
patrol.  He was first shocked by large shell,
and I tried to get him away, but it was
impossible.  He was shot through the leg,
which was broken.  He lay on the field, in no
pain, and next day was killed by shrapnel
instantly."

The General's body was found in the
Armagh Wood and buried in a military
cemetery near Poperinghe, Sir Julian Byng
and a large number of officers attending the
funeral.

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   LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
   DUKE STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E., AND GREAT WINDMILL STREET, W.

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.. pgfooter::