Vimy (25 page)

Other men died that night and not all of them in No Man’s Land. That same afternoon, Corporal Eric Forbes of the 6th Field Company, Engineers, stood beside the Arras-Souchez road watching the traffic. Up came an officer with a company of men. “Corporal,” he asked, “do you know of any place around here my men could rest? We’re a tunnelling company and we’re going up to the ridge. We have to get some rest because we have to work all night.” Forbes found a billet in a building behind the armoury where others were also sleeping. The tunnellers entered, slipped out of their equipment, and settled down on bunks of wire and netting. Fifteen minutes later a shell with an instantaneous fuse struck the building, killing twelve, wounding thirty. Just a few inches higher and it would have passed over harmlessly.

For Eric Forbes, this was a moment of horror. He was twenty-four, a Nova Scotian who had been studying engineering at Queen’s. He’d joined a militia company of engineers because that would count as a credit toward his degree. He’d been working as purser on a boat out of Boston the summer war was declared. A telegram had ordered him into active service. Now here he was, standing outside a ruined building, his gorge rising as an old friend, the company driver William Stalker, staggered toward him, trying to stuff his guts back into the jagged hole in his belly before collapsing at Forbes’s feet.

3

Saturday, April 7, dawned, another fine day, the kind of spring morning that makes a man feel good to be young and alive. With the battle only forty-eight hours away the attacking brigades began to organize their advance headquarters. As Brigade Major, it was Duncan Macintyre’s task to make arrangements in the Zivy Cave. By afternoon the job was complete and the headquarters personnel of the 4th Infantry Brigade were sloshing forward with their kits and office supplies through the deep mud of the communication trenches, only to be halted by a flurry of shelling. One man died, another was wounded.

The cave itself was jammed with men, casting grotesque shadows in the candlelight as they played cards or brewed tea over small fires or carved their names on the chalk walls. A stream of humanity constantly shuffled in and out, splashed by water that dribbled from the roof above covering everything in an inch and more of grey slime. Stretcher-bearers staggered under wounded men whose cries punctuated the general buzz of voices. Carrying parties entered, dumped their loads, and went off for more. Mud-covered men stumbled in from the front to catch a few winks of sleep. To Macintyre, the stench of foul air, mud, cooking, sweat, urine, chloride of lime, and stale tobacco was nauseating. More than four hundred men had crowded into the cave, tracking in so much mud that a layer of wet ooze carpeted the chalk floor.

While Macintyre was setting up his headquarters, others were still out beyond the forward lines, preparing the way for the assault and probing the German defences. Two companies of 48th Highlanders had established themselves on the rear lip of one crater in broad daylight, as nervous a position as existed in the Vimy sector. One pair of scouts managed to work their way across No Man’s Land and right into the German lines, so close they could hear the sentries chatting. Nothing would do but that the sergeant-major of one of the companies, Taffy Willis, should decide, against all orders, to attack a German post. He crept up to the enemy line, tossed three Mills bombs, emptied his Colt revolver and then, in frustration, flung his steel helmet at the Germans before getting back unscathed. It was not a healthy place to be; four of his men died that day in No Man’s Land; six more were wounded.

Private Andrew McCrindle, a nineteen-year-old from Montreal, was also heading for No Man’s Land early that afternoon with a work party from the 24th Battalion (Victoria Rifles) detailed to dig more jumping-off trenches. With his big glasses, his baby-blue eyes, his snub nose, and his smooth, innocent face, the skinny McCrindle bore little resemblance to the recruiting poster stereotype of the jut-jawed, gimlet-eyed fighting man. This would be his first battle, and so it gave him a good feeling to pass the hundreds of big guns lined up, almost hub to hub, and talk to the gunners, who boasted to him about the twelve-mile range that would drop shells far in the German rear to prevent reserve troops moving forward.

McCrindle was curious about the long ropes tied to the barrels of the big howitzers. The gunners explained that the trajectory was so high it was beyond the range of the usual mechanism designed to lower the barrel. Four men had to haul it down with ropes. But the German guns were still in action, as McCrindle’s party found out when they worked with pick and shovel in front of their own trenches. The Germans spotted the chalk waste thrown up by the diggers and brought down a rain of shells. The work party scuttled to safety through the Zivy Subway and took refuge in the Zivy Cave.

The German aerial observers, floating in the cloudless skies above, had spotted the chalk and alerted the enemy batteries. In their frail sausage balloons they peered down at the mishmash of wriggling trenches, trying to make sense of the dun-coloured world below, seeking other tell-tale clues to pinpoint the date of the offensive they knew was coming. The balloons were under constant attack by the Royal Flying Corps – frustrating and dangerous work for the British and Canadian pilots. The Germans were able to winch their sausages to the ground faster than the airmen could manoeuvre to destroy them. It was a costly business: for every enemy balloon shot to pieces the RFC lost a flying machine.

Young Billy Bishop of No. 60 Squadron, Late of Owen Sound, became an official ace that day and also won his first decoration, the Military Cross. He had been given a specific balloon as a target, but just as he dived on it he heard the rattle of machine-gun fire and found himself in combat with the enemy. Fortunately, the German flew directly in line with Bishop’s gun. Bishop shot him down but lost the target, which had been hauled to earth during the combat. Frustrated, he disobeyed orders to keep above one thousand feet, dived at the balloon and attempted to destroy it in its bed, scattering the crew and at the same time doing his best to avoid both the anti-aircraft guns and the balls of rocket fire that the British called “flaming onions.”

Now he was in a real pickle: his steep dive had caused his engine to fail. Bishop went into a glide, heading for an open field, sick at heart, knowing that he would shortly be either dead or a prisoner. Like those of others before him, his thoughts turned to home. How his parents would worry when he was reported missing! But like most heroes and all air aces, Bishop was blessed with more than his share of luck. At fifteen feet above the battlefield, his engine kicked in and he streaked for home, so close to the ground that no ack-ack gun could get him and no pilot would dare dive on him. Below him in the Vimy trenches, the startled Germans missed their aim. Behind, the balloon he’d dived on was a mass of flames.

It was a bitter-sweet victory for Billy Bishop. When he got back to base he found that three other pilots from his squadron, all good friends, had been lost in a battle with Manfred von Richthofen’s
Jagstaffel II
, giving the German ace his thirty-seventh kill and, coincidentally, a promotion to captain. “Oh, how I hate the Hun,” Bishop wrote to his fiancée that night. “They have done in so many of my best friends. I’ll make them pay, I swear.”

On the ground that evening, the signals section of the Black Watch was ordered to bring up the battalion’s rations from the dump on the Quarry Line. For Bill Breckenridge, these last few days had been a nightmare of fetching and carrying. The signallers seemed to be constantly on the move, night and day. And, in those last crowded hours, movement became more difficult. Breckenridge and his carrying party were barred by sentries from using the Grange Subway, now restricted to one-way traffic forward. But no one liked using the trenches, which were by then waist-deep in water, so, after some discussion, the party decided to chance a route above ground.

Breckenridge was the first man out of the communication trench. Hunched well over, loping along at top speed, he willed himself to dodge the enemy bullets.

“Where are you going?” the man behind him shouted.

“Never mind where I’m going,” Breckenridge panted. “Don’t follow me unless you want to. If you know a better way, go to it. I’m getting out of here as quickly as I can.”

When, at last, they tumbled into the Cross Street trench, Breckenridge felt as if a ton of weight had suddenly been removed from his shoulders. With the mud splashing over their uniforms they followed the trench to the Quarry Line. There they filled their ration bags and headed into the traffic stream moving up the Grange Subway. It was hard work, balancing the bags on their shoulders, trying to avoid stepping on the hundreds of men curled up on the wet chalk floor or simply standing, three deep. “Watch where you’re going,” Breckenridge heard one man grumble; and another: “What size boots do you wear?” Gingerly he and the others picked their way through the narrow subway, squeezed into the headquarters dugout, deposited their loads, and settled down as best they could.

As night fell and the rumble of guns continued and the occasional starshell illuminated the debris of No Man’s Land, the Royal Flying Corps swept across the Douai Plain behind the ridge and bombed the Douai airport, where von Richthofen’s
Jagstaffel
was quartered. Richthofen’s own allred Albatross barely escaped being blown to pieces, but as the last of the raiders droned off into the night, the German ace was able to get some sleep. It was a fitful slumber; he tossed on his cot, continuing to dream of guns firing above him. Suddenly the dream became a reality: he sat bolt upright in bed at the sound of a low-flying airplane directly above his hut. The noise increased until it filled his quarters. The plane, he realized, could be no more than one hundred feet above him. Instinctively, in his fright, Germany’s greatest pilot pulled the blankets over his head just as a bomb shattered the window of the hut. Von Richthofen leaped up, ran out onto the tarmac, pistol in hand, and fired a few shots at the vanishing British plane. Then he returned to his troubled sleep, awaiting the coming dawn.

CHAPTER NINE
The Final Hours

1

Easter Sunday dawned, another bright and beautiful spring morning with a breeze light enough to be balmy and strong enough to dry the roads. As far as the eye could reach, in the clear air, the kite balloons stretched in an unbroken line to the north and south horizons. At his observation post that Sunday morning, Lieutenant Jack Fairweather of No. 4 Siege Battery looked up to see the larks circling and singing, oblivious to the thunder of the guns, just as in John McCrae’s famous poem.

Duncan Macintyre awoke, braced by the weather, and, like so many others that day, found his thoughts turning to home- to family members going to Easter service, his new wife, Marjorie, in her finery, the relatives gathering for the traditional Easter dinner. Macintyre found it nauseating on this final day before the battle to contemplate the horrors that lay ahead: two Christian nations tearing at each other’s throats at the time of the great religious festival, each side convinced that it was right. The 4th Division’s commander, David Watson, shared Macintyre’s reflective mood. “What a contrast to the real object of this Holy Day,” he wrote in his diary. “I never heard such shelling as last night.”

Behind the lines, the French countryside was at prayer. As the fighting troops moved forward, streams of peasants in sober black walked to church. Bells rang. Mass was sung. A few soldiers, such as Dr. Robert Manion, took Holy Communion. Manion, a medical officer and a future leader of the Conservative Party, prayed for his family and scribbled a note in his pocket diary: “If anything should happen to me, I would like this book sent to Mrs. R.J. Manion, 300 Wilbrod Street, Ottawa.”

Not many followed his example. Canon Scott, thwarted in his desire to hold a service on Good Friday, tried again. In a back area occupied by one of the siege batteries, he commandeered a Nissen hut and tried to light some candles for his makeshift altar. Each time he did so, the blast from one of the 15-inch guns would blow them out. The only suitable shelter he could find was the YMCA hut, full of sleeping men. Few bothered to rouse themselves to pray.

It was a day of rest for most, but not for all. There was no rest for Sergeant Charles Evans of the 3rd Division’s ammunition column. Evans had been looking forward to spending a full day flat on his back in a civilian billet eight miles behind the lines, far beyond the reach of enemy guns. His job was done; the mule trains of his unit had brought the final loads of ammunition to the gunners. But at 5:15 that morning, Evans was roused from his sleep and given new orders. He must saddle his horse and deliver a load of signal equipment – plus a full bottle of Scotch – to a captain with the 7th Brigade signals in the Grange Subway off the Quarry Line. The signal equipment, one suspects, was a camouflage; it was the bottle of Scotch that counted.

Off went Evans, his day of rest forgotten, loaded down with four heavy coils of telephone wire, two on each shoulder, two nosebags, one on each shoulder, each holding two field telephones, plus his haversack and gas mask, and last, but certainly not least, the bottle of Scotch. He rode to the horse lines, left his steed there, and mushed on foot through the mud until he reached a track leading to what had once been the hamlet of La Targette on the main road from Arras.

Here two M.P.s stopped him. The track was closed; overland travel was out. He would have to use the communication trench. Obediently, Sergeant Evans climbed down into the trench and for the next three hours splashed slowly forward, knee deep in a muddy gruel, with the haversacks, telephones, and coüs swinging wildly about him, threatening the safety of his precious bottle. But when finally he reached La Targette corner he could go no farther, for he found himself stuck fast in the gumbo. It was now nine o’clock on Easter Sunday morning, and as Evans called wildly for somebody to come and pull him out, he realized it would be some time before the signals captain got his Scotch.