The Last Lady from Hell (17 page)

The crowd parted as we marched to the clearing and then followed us until we circled up again. Terry called the band ready. “‘Scotland the Brave,’ ‘Rowan Tree,’ and ‘Cockney Jocks,’” he ordered. “By the center, quick, march!”

The bass drum banged, the snares rolled, the pipers struck in the drones and the crowd went wild. Any pain that Hicks had been feeling was now gone, he was in the piper’s trance and getting high on the opium of a cheering crowd. It turned out that Commander Don Hicks was quite an accomplished piper and despite his pain kept up with us younger pipers. We played for three-quarters of an hour before we were saved by the bell–the mess bell.

Terry called pipes down and dismissed the band for dinner. The men were fired up and the mess was loud and raucous. We all sat at the commander’s table. It was the same food as the rest but it was an honor nonetheless.

That evening, as we turned in, I couldn’t stop thinking about Don Hicks’ vivid account of his horrific experience at La Bassee. I had never heard of such senseless slaughter and the realization that I had been so naive about war was now haunting me.

Reveille came too early and we all scrambled out of our cots and into our uniforms as quickly as our early morning clumsiness would allow. We were ordered to fall in and were marched out past rows of tents onto a large field.

It was still quite chilly, maybe ten degrees Celsius, and the early morning darkness provided no hope of warmth yet. We formed up in huge lines, maybe fifty men in each and at least ten rows deep. Five hundred bleary-eyed men lined up for calisthenics at four thirty
could not exist without plenty of grumbling. That grumbling was extinguished by the loud shouts of our drill sergeants who insisted on making us do this exercise called a squat thrust, among others. You would bend down, put your hands on the ground before you, thrust your legs out as to be parallel to the ground and then reverse the process to a standing position. It was an unsettling exercise for those that were kilted because inevitably you would be mooning the row of men behind you, which would conjure up any number of reactions from the groans of disgust to whistles or cat calls.

Most of us were in good physical condition and the morning exercises were not much of a challenge. However, George Cohen, our med student piper, was not very physically fit, having come from a well to do family that considered manual labor to be beneath their class and status.

George’s lack of enthusiasm and inability to perform the exercises quickly caught the attention of our loud and very angry drill sergeant, Sergeant Balls. Yes. Balls. Perhaps his name was the source of his endless anger. Not knowing his first name, we decided it must be “Harry” and referred to him as such among ourselves.

“Sergeant Harry Balls” would root out weak soldiers and hound them mercilessly, pushing them to the mental or physical breaking point. Public humiliation was his favorite pastime and George Cohen was his favorite victim. I suppose that one could make a case that Balls was just trying to weed out those that were unfit for the battlefield or that he was trying to make better men out of all of us, but I believe he simply enjoyed bullying people and abusing his authority.

He would routinely reward George’s poor performance with K.P. or latrine duty. Latrine duty was particularly bad because the latrine was simply a multi-holed outhouse and could get rather messy. Every week new holes would have to be dug and the old ones filled in with lye and dirt.

Balls badgered George relentlessly, until one day after a particularly ruthless dressing down in front of the men, Dan McKee
decided to take action. Dan had become fond of George’s dry sense of humor and easy-going demeanor and was weary of Balls’ attacks on his friend.

As we were all on the practice field, bayoneting German scarecrows and belly crawling under barbed wire, Big Dan told Sergeant Balls that his presence was needed in the latrine to break up a scuffle between two men. Bill Lewis and Sean Lyons were nowhere to be seen, which led me to believe that something was afoot. Several minutes later, Balls returned a pale and shaken shadow of his former self. The training seemed smoother for George after that day and Balls noticeably kept his distance from our little group. I queried Dan on several occasions, but he insisted that nothing out of the ordinary and taken place, so I left it alone.

One evening on leave, Bill Lewis and I were on our fourth pint of ale at the local pub, when I asked him about that day. The beer had loosened the lock of secrecy and he explained how Dan, Sean and he had grabbed Balls, flipped over the cover to the latrine pit and held him by his ankles over the hole. Dan then calmly explained that he was going to be in deep shit if he didn’t lay off George Cohen. He was held aloft over the stinking pit until he agreed to all the conditions required by Dan. I was mid-swallow and spit out a full gulp of beer when Bill revealed the truth about that day. He pounded me on my back as I coughed uncontrollably and said, “You didn’t hear that from me.”

As I slowly regained my ability to breath, I glanced up toward the bar and noticed Dan McKee giving us a sideways look, with a knowing smirk on his face.

LEAVING EAST SANDLING

W
e Canadians had somehow been mistakenly thought of by our British counterparts as an unruly lot of rascals with an overly developed affection for alcohol and an inability to follow orders well. We had, however, proven on the field of battle that we were ruthless, fearless fighters who the British were quite happy to have on their side. Because of our proven battlefield merits, our shortcomings were overlooked or, at least, tolerated.

Terry Manning was still very enthusiastic about putting the training behind us and getting down to the business of war and he let Commander Hicks know it regularly. Hicks, after some consideration, had decided to accommodate Terry’s request. After all, we were already accomplished pipers and drummers, and we quickly mastered the requirements of stretcher bearing and field dressing.

The British Expeditionary Forces were hungry for men and the pipers and drummers continued to be of special interest. It appeared that our small group was going to see the Western Front. Hicks had made clear to us that we were going to be split into two groups consisting of two pipers and one drummer. Our orders would direct us to the regiments that required our services on the Front.

It was mid-June 1916 and the weather had been more hospitable than normal. East Sandling and, in fact, all of England was lush and
green and for the last several weeks had been enjoying what could only be described as delightful conditions.

The drummers were grumbling about Terry’s insistence on an early departure as they were enjoying the fine weather, but I could tell that they were every bit as ready to serve and were simply grumbling because they thought it was their obligation to maintain the drummer image.

When the orders were received Terry, George and Dan were assigned to the 1st Newfoundland regiment, part of the 29th Division of the British 4th Army. Bill, Sean, and I were going to join the 36th Ulster Division and be attached to a regiment upon arriving in France.

On 24 June we joined a Battalion that was being sent to the coastal town of Seaford, England, where we were to board a troop transport to France to connect with our respective regiments.

It took the better part of a day to reach Seaford where we were billeted overnight in a large barn commandeered for just such a purpose. It was moderately comfortable but still smelled of livestock which bothered several of the men. To me it was a comforting smell that brought about a feeling of homesickness that I had not experienced up till then.

The next morning we marched to the docks, which was a thirty-minute undertaking. There, we were called by regiment for our ship assignments. Because we were not really attached to a regiment in Seaford we were assigned to the smallest group, which was in turn assigned to the smallest vessel. Out on a smaller dock sat our transport, The David Richard, a sixty-five-foot, single-engine steam freighter that was in dire need of a paint job and perhaps a good bottom scraping.

We made our way through the crowded front street and out to our ride along with the 140 other men, most of whom were either Scottish or Welsh and belonged to the British engineering division.

“Not quite The Olympic, eh?” Dan remarked as we neared the boat.

Terry looked warily at the old vessel and, with misgivings, simply responded, “Indeed not”.

“Doc” George had gone on ahead of us all and was bombarding the boat’s salty crew with a barrage of questions faster than they could answer.

“How long is the boat? When was she built? How many hours to cross the Channel? How many miles across is it?”

In an effort to save the crew from George’s unending questions, Terry produced his pipes and interrupted. “I don’t suppose you fellows would like to hear the pipes?” he called out.

“Hey, that would be grand!” one fellow replied, eager to get away from this inquisitive passenger and get back to work. One weather-worn crewman asked, “Do ya know The Black Bear, lad?”

“I do,” Terry responded, “and it always sounds better when played after Scotland the Brave.” The crusty old Scotsman cracked a smile on his leathery face exposing the fact that most of his teeth were missing and winked with a nod of appreciation at Terry’s choice of tunes.

The crew seemed to liven up the pace as Terry played tune after tune and thirty minutes later we were shoving off. As lines were cast off, Terry played “The Skye Boat Song” and “The Highland Cathedral.” Lovely, haunting lullabies that drifted across the entire harbor. For the short span of time that the tunes lasted, everyone, from crewman to passenger, seemed to stop and listen reflecting on the moment. The pipes carry well over water and have an almost mystical effect when combined with that element.

The David Richard steamed slowly out of the harbor and faded into the morning fog, ushered by two tunes that, sadly, would be played by Terry at the graves of hundreds of young men over the next several years.

The straight-line distance from Seaford, England to Le Havre, France is approximately seventy-five nautical miles and with a smooth sea, the David Richard could maintain a modest ten knots making the “milk run” in a little over eight hours. Even though the weather was ideal, the Channel had continuous chop adding some time and discomfort to the crossing. The English Channel is very different from the Saint Lawrence River, which is all I had to measure it against. So I was somewhat surprised to find that you cannot see the French coastline from the shores of England at least not from Seaford. The narrowest part of the Channel is twenty-one miles across up in Dover and on a clear day it is possible to see France! The Saint Lawrence, being my only reference as a waterway, has a modest current, but again, I was surprised to find that the Channel has no current.