Vimy (31 page)

Back on the old Canadian front line, William Pecover’s battalion was the last to go over the top, since it was the reserve battalion in the reserve brigade. Standing at his post, both horrified and enthralled by the spectacle before him, Pecover felt a strange elation. As the short word of command was passed along the trenches, he and his fellows clambered out into the mud. Here he came face to face with the horror of war: wounded men sprawled everywhere in the slime, in the shell holes, in the mine craters, some screaming to the skies, some lying silently, some begging for help, some struggling to keep from drowning in the craters, the field swarming with stretcher-bearers trying to keep up with the casualties. As Pecover trudged forward over the broken wire and the pocked terrain, he struggled to ignore the human agony around him.

Captain Claude Williams’s machine gunners were also pushing off at almost the same moment. Williams had won the coin toss with a fellow officer to take them over the top. They lurched forward under back-breaking loads, heavily encumbered not only with normal kit and weapons but also with guns, tripods, ammunition belts, water, and spare parts.

The machine gunners had no sooner set out than a German gas shell landed among them. The six-foot Donald Fraser heard a “pop” close to his face and suddenly found that he could no longer exhale or inhale; his breathing was paralysed. With a celerity that astonished him, he slipped on his respirator and his breathing was at once restored. Soon he was stumbling across what had once been No Man’s Land, passing a series of shell holes full of dead Canadians.

It occurred to Williams, as it had to others, that the scene of the attack was nothing like the popular conception of a line of soldiers racing forward and bayoneting the enemy. What he saw instead were clumps of men, scattered over the entire front, toiling slowly up the ridge. The scenes of death on all sides were not heroic but sickening. Williams passed one man lying in a deep shell hole crying “Water! Water!” The top of his head had been blown off, exposing his brains. Fraser noted it too, and couldn’t help thinking that the brains looked rather like fish roe. That sort of thing was never shown in the Victorian paintings of gallant officers expiring slowly in the arms of their comrades, a small pink stain on the shirt front, a hand raised languidly in a kind of greeting as if the hero were sinking into a peaceful sleep. Such scenes, if they had ever existed, were obsolete. Never again would war be referred to as “noble.”

3

Having reached their position on the Red Line, the forward battalions of the Iron Sixth watched the bombardment of Thélus and waited for their turn to move. Their task was to seize the blasted village, then head for the next objective-a series of German support trenches marked as the Blue Line on the maps.

On their left, the fresh British brigade had also moved into the line. One of the regiments, the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, formed up in front of the Nova Scotia Rifles. To the astonishment of the Maritimers, taking cover in the trench, the Scotsmen stood tall, following the sergeant’s command to “right dress ranks,” as if on a parade-ground, totally oblivious to the presence of enemy snipers. It was magnificent, of course, but it was not war as the twentieth century was coming to know it.

At 9:35, right on schedule, the barrage again began to creep forward. All across the battlefield, observers in the rear could witness a spectacle they would never see again: the wall of exploding steel sweeping up the slopes of Vimy Ridge like a rainstorm with the youth of Canada following directly in its wake.

There is, alas, no such thing as a perfect battle. Tragedy mars the best-planned assaults. Some of the so-called silent batteries of Canadian field guns, pushed forward at the last moment and concealed until now from the enemy, opened up, only to fall tragically short. In that short advance toward Thélus more men were killed by their own shells than by the Germans. The survivors soldiered on firing their Lewis guns from the hip.

This was Harry Wilford’s first battle. He was a twenty-two-year-old Englishman who had come to Canada in 1904 to join the Barr colonists in the North West. War was in his blood: his ancestors had come to England with the Conqueror, and some member of his family had been in the armed forces since that day. To get to France Wilford had dropped his reserve commission and reverted to the ranks. Now, as he moved forward with the men of the 28th Battalion, all recruited in the Canadian North West, he spotted a group of Germans holding out in a crater directly ahead. Wilford dived head first into a smaller shell hole, pulled the pin on a Mills bomb, and to his horror fumbled it. The live grenade tumbled to his feet; he had four seconds to get rid of it or be blown to bits. Wilford took a running kick at the bomb, booted it out of the shell hole, and then straight-armed a second one at the Germans, only to discover that they had unaccountably vanished.

Where had they gone? He found a small opening at the bottom of the crater that turned out to be the rear entrance to a chalk pit. Without a thought, Wilford squeezed down the narrow passage until he came to a turn. Now he cursed himself for a fool. There he was, all alone, with nobody behind him and God knew how many of the enemy lurking just around the corner. Gingerly, Wilford pushed his rifle around the corner and pulled the trigger. It was pitch black; all he could hear was the report of the gun. Back he squirmed into the crater, only to discover the Germans streaming out of the main entrance to the chalk pit. Fortunately, they were surrendering. One man who’d been hit in the stomach was carried out, and Wilford realized with a pang that it was his own blind shot that had done the job. For the rest of his life Harry Wilford was bothered by that incident. It was all so unnecessary, he realized: the Germans had been going to surrender anyway.

By ten that morning, the forward battalions reached the outskirts of Thélus. Within forty minutes, the entire village was in British and Canadian hands. The town was a shell; no wall stood higher than six feet. Only in the medieval caverns beneath was there evidence of enemy life-a bedroom complete with wallpaper and a feather bed with real sheets, a fully equipped bar, a table set for a meal with no fewer than five waiters in attendance. Back they went to the POW cages.

Above ground, all familiar landmarks had vanished under the battering of the artillery. Claude Williams felt lost. He and his encumbered gun crew had trouble keeping up. Williams had plotted his route carefully to take him through the hamlet of Les Tilleuls on the Lens-Arras road-not far from the Red reporting line on his map. But he could find no trace of it. At last he came upon a military policeman and asked him where Les Tilleuls might be. “You’re in the middle of it, sir,” the M.P. told him. Williams looked about: nothing. Not even a stump to mark the passing of the scented lindens.

Up ahead, Gerry Scott, a sniper with the 29th, searched vainly for Heros Wood, which lay beyond Thélus on the German side of the ridge. He’d been sent forward to scout the wood for signs of the enemy, but he couldn’t find any wood and he couldn’t find any enemy. He had a good map and knew he was in the right square, but there was no longer any wood. It had been smashed out of existence; here, too, the very stumps had been destroyed.

Scott finally found a wood. He recognized it as Bois de la Ville – the division’s objective. It was supposed to be bristling with Germans, but Scott saw no one. He searched about, picked up some souvenirs, entered a German tunnel running under the ridge, and came face to face with an active howitzer whose crew, waiting apparently for any excuse to get out of action, fled immediately. Scott went back to his battalion to report that the objective was clear.

Meanwhile William Pecover’s platoon had also reached the obliterated village of Les Tilleuls and was trying to get across the Lens-Arras road in order to reach their jumping-off position on the Blue Line. All Pecover could see ahead of him was bursting shrapnel. The Germans were trying to block the fresh troops from crossing the road. It seemed impossible that anyone could make it through that hail of steel balls. “We’ve got to get through,” cried Pecover’s officer. “It’s every man for himself. Keep the line as well as you can. When you get close to the road run for it.”

Pecover dashed forward, men toppling all around him. Somehow he made it. At 11:30 the battalion was in position on the Blue Line, the men working their way forward through the old German support trenches, crawling between the dead and the wounded and through the swarms of prisoners and the moppers-up with their white arm bands. Officers and NCOs scurried about straightening out the line. Pecover and the others crawled into the shell holes about 150 yards ahead of the new position, just short of the next barrier of enemy wire. There they waited for the barrage to move ahead and the last stage of the attack to begin.

4

On the right the barrage was already lifting and the 1st Division was starting to push forward. The 2nd Division troops could see the red patches on their neighbours’ shoulders, bright as new wounds. At 12:42 the barrage began to lift on the right of the 2nd Division, exactly as planned. By one o’clock the whole line was in motion. Bandsman Paddy Smith of Pecover’s unit went forward with the assaulting troops, piping a regimental march on his piccolo. The notes came through the rumble of the barrage, sweet and clear, a haunting reminder of older, gentler wars. Then suddenly the music stopped. Paddy Smith was dead.

A machine gun opened up on the left of the Winnipeggers. Two rifle grenades blew it out of action. On the right, a battery of German 5.9s stood fast, the crew firing point blank at the advancing troops. One of the company commanders, Captain Lane, rushed forward, seized the guns, and killed those of the crew who refused to surrender. Later those same guns would be turned around to fire on their former owners.

The barrage, which had been concentrating on Farbus and Farbus Wood on the 1st Division front, now lifted as the troops seized the Brown Line and began bombing the German dugouts. Again the cry of
“Kamerad!”
was heard. When no one came out of one dugout, William Pecover tried out his high school German. “
Kommen sie hier, Herr Fritz,”
he called at the top of his voice, and out they came, apparently delighted to be steered toward the rear.

The Winnipeggers dug in on the lower east slope of the ridge, waiting for a counterattack that never came. It was bitterly cold, so cold that Pecover took a chance, climbed out of his funk-hole, and began to walk briskly up and down the sunken road that ran across the ridge. Suddenly a gas shell exploded a few feet away. He raced back to the security of his hollow, only to find that another soldier had appropriated it. A moment later a second shell blew the new occupant to pieces.

Claude Williams, meanwhile, had sited his four machine guns on the eastern side of the ridge to protect the front against counterattack. With that job done he found a dugout, climbed down its twenty steps, and proceeded to eat his iron rations. His batman miraculously produced a loaf of bread. Williams wanted to know how he got it.

“Did you notice that stiff near our headquarters?” the batman replied. “He had a loaf in his haversack. It was a bit bloody so I cut out that part.” The two hungry men munched it without a second thought.

On the crest of the ridge, Andrew McCrindle, with other Victoria Rifles, was guarding a large group of prisoners. To McCrindle, the captured Germans had a strange, sour smell, and he wondered if it came from eating too much liverwurst. “Maybe we smell like bully beef to them,” he thought.

At that moment, one of the Germans spoke to McCrindle in excellent English.

“24th Battalion,” he said, indicating McCrindle’s cap badge. “The Vies, eh? I knew where your armoury was-on Cathcart Street?”

McCrindle was taken aback. “How did you know?” he asked.

“I used to work in the restaurant in the Windsor Station,” the German said. “We used to go over to Mother Martin’s for a quick one.”

McCrindle, who didn’t drink, had never heard of Mother Martin’s, a well-known Montreal watering-hole.

“I guess you’re too young to know that joint,” the German said. He explained that his father had wired to him to come home as soon as the war started.

His officers had warned their men, he said, not to be taken prisoner as the Canadians were all Red Indians who would scalp them. “I knew better,” he said. “So I thought it would be a good idea to be in a place where the Canadians would take me, so here I am.”

McCrindle accepted all this, as he had accepted everything that day, without much thought. Only later did the odd-ness of that encounter begin to seep in.

Duncan Macintyre had more time to reflect. The Brigade Major of the 4th left the Zivy Cave at three that afternoon and walked across the battlefield, surveying the scene around him. Everywhere he looked, men were digging in. Telephone lines and light railways were already being laid, and special parties were picking up the dead and taking them to the cemetery grounds. Some of the corpses were sadly familiar. There, lying with his pack still on his back, was Major Frank Thompson, who had played basketball with him in Regina and had eaten dinner with him just before the battle. Now Thompson lay crumpled, his pack giving him an odd, humpbacked look, as if he’d pitched forward from the weight of the load, face down, his knees buckled beneath him, his hands spread out in front.

Macintyre turned away, saddened, but he could not escape the hideous concomitants to battle – a dead German spread-eagled on the back wall of a trench, his arms flung wide as if crucified, his head crushed to a red pulp like a mashed strawberry; others lying as if sleeping, their clothes torn from them by the shell blasts; still others ripped open, their entrails spilling into the mud. In that drab landscape, a new and brighter hue had been added: the water in the shell holes was now red with blood.

All along the ridge men could be seen staring in astonishment at the pastoral scene to the east, marred only by one incongruous spectacle: a shell had struck a German freight train as it crossed a bridge over the road from Arras to Lens, and one car hung precariously over the side. The whole of the Douai Plain was wide open, with the enemy in full retreat; but the sudden collapse of his defence lines could not be exploited. Ironically, the very fury of the Vimy barrage had made that impossible: the ground was so badly broken that the guns could not be hauled forward between the shell holes.