Letters From the Front

Dated: September 15, 1916

A sojourn of some two and a half months in France and Belgium has taken me out of the peace time soldiering class and has shown me many, many things that a reading of the papers, no matter how close, could never convey to anyone who had not been here.

On our arrival in France we were shipped up to Belgium - and 'shipped up' is the proper expression—and landed some miles behind the firing-line but close enough to see the trench flares, hear the rattle of machine-gun and rifle-fire and the distant boom of artillery.

After a few days' tramping from camp to camp our turn to go into the trenches came around. The fates were kind and the particular trench to which we were to go to receive our baptism of fire was reported to be a very quiet one; nevertheless we had the uneasy feeling that everyone experiences the first time in, that every bullet had its billet just where we happened to be at that particular moment, and how we did keep our heads down when the guide passed the word along that we were coming to a dangerous spot !

A tramp of some hundreds of yards along a communication trench and then out into the open, across which we carried on for a few hundred yards more, brought us to where, behind an irregular line of sand-bags, we were met by an English officer, who casually mentioned in reply to our inquiries as to how much. farther it was to the front line, that we were there, and that the Hun was only some 120 yards away from us. The look of surprise had hardly had time to fade away from our faces when he equally casually but very cordially invited us to come into his dugout either for tea or a drink. Then we began to feel at home and have an idea that the trenches were not quite so bad as they had been painted.

Our first tour was short and we suffered very few casualties.

We returned behind the lines, and for the next couple of weeks supplied working parties to repair trenches, dig drains and the like—a very unwelcome job.

To my great surprise I was detailed then to attend a month's course at the Second Army School of Instruction to learn a few more advanced points in the gentle art of making war.

While at the school I learned that the battalion had commenced on a trek to France on foot, but I was fortunate enough to be able to follow them. by train, only a matter of some fifty miles, but the time occupied in covering the distance by train was three days.

On the way down I began to realize that our first experience in Belgium was almost child's play in comparison with what we were going into. Every few hundred yards along the roads were enormous piles of ammunition, while the amount of traffic on the roads beggars description. Hundreds of motor lorries loaded with ammunition, motor busses with troops, ambulances and guns moved in one continuous stream towards the battle front, while empty lorries, loaded ambulances, etc., were going back. Here and there the traffic was held up to allow the passage of a limousine either going or coming, carrying a staff officer or other fortunate beggar who was not engaged in seeing the battlefields of France on foot.

At present we are encamped on the main road to the firing-line and the amount of traffic that passes both day and night would make Main Street look like a little country town. It is really a marvellous sight.

While we have not yet been called upon to take our place in the firing-line here, we have been furnishing parties practically every night to repair trenches, dig new communication trenches and cable trenches and carry up supplies, a job cordially detested by everyone, both men and officers. Leaving camp some time in the afternoon we tramp our way over the ground recently captured from the Germans, where the work is carried on under incessant shell-fire—but strange to say where there is almost no rifle-fire—a thankless job, as it means just dig, dig, dig, without any chance of retaliation—and there is a considerable amount of satisfaction in at least being able to fire a rifle in the direction of the enemy. Six of my lads were wiped out by one high explosive shell a few days ago.

We read in the papers that an advance of 1,000 yards has been made and that we have captured the important villages of X__ and Y__, but to the lay mind this conveys no idea of what this means. The Biblical expression (my Scottish parentage) ! which says that in the beginning there was nothing, best expresses what the ground gained looks like; earth turned over time and time again by shell-fire, and now just one mass of shell-holes; houses merely a pile of brick-dust and trees just stumps shorn of all foliage and splintered into matchwood. In the pale greenish grey of the moonlight, with the faint (at first) odour of the dead, it is a scene of the most appalling desolation.

I believe that Macmillan and Floyd have both been wounded and are now in England. I have not yet run across any Commerce men in France.