A Rifleman Went to War

to hell out of here.”

Dan carried a message to be delivered to the first officer he met, explaining the situation and requesting that a force be sent over to relieve us. We were not disturbed by the enemy and, shortly after midnight, a platoon of infantry and a machine gun crew came in and we returned to our lines — very well pleased with ourselves. And, as events turned out, we were very lucky. Just before daylight, the enemy turned loose with his artillery and killed nearly half of the members of the garrison of the crater: compelling the retirement of the survivors.

That was the way it went. There was one time, however, when one of our machine gun crews, under Sergeant Norton-Taylor, occupied one of those craters for five days, subsisting on the food and water they took from dead Germans and they not only held the crater all this time but actually took prisoners, including one full crew of enemy machine gunners. During that time, such was the confusion, due to the craters changing hands so often, that we had given them up for lost. They were finally relieved by a patrol from the Nineteenth Battalion, on our left.

Telling you the incident about the prisoner, Paul, a few pages back reminds me of another extremely odd happening which occurred to me several weeks before this time. During my more or less “checkered” career, I have had many practical demonstrations of the fact that “truth is stranger than fiction.” One such comes to mind now.

About ten o’clock one night they commenced to give us an awful shelling. This was so unusual that we felt certain that Fritz was up to some devilment so, of course, all hands were wide awake and on the alert. I had been standing beside Major Gray when a couple of shells ripped through the top of our parapet, one on each side of us and not more than five or six feet distant, both going on and exploding in the ditch behind the trench without doing any damage. Hundreds of others were bursting all along the line and, despite all efforts to take cover, many casualties resulted.

This Major Gray, by the way, was the one who, when we were all so tired and weary on a march that we could scarcely stagger, would stride down along the line and strike up some old nonsensical song that would immediately bring us to life. I well remember one of his favorites. It goes like this:

“I’m tired of living alone

“I want a wee wife of my own;

“Someone to caress me, someone to undress me –

“I’m tired of sleeping alone.”

Things having quieted down a bit and the Major having gone back to his dug-out, I meandered along the line, stopping now and then to check up on the various M.G. crews. Just as I arrived at the gun emplacement at the junction of the O and P trenches I heard a sharp challenge from the sentry on the firing step and, immediately after, saw a German soldier come crawling over the parapet and drop down into the trench, the sentry all the time keeping him covered with his rifle. Seeing me, he, (the sentry) said: “Here’s a prisoner, Sergeant — and don’t forget that I got him.”

I took charge of the German and escorted him back to the Major’s quarters. The Major was much interested, but, as he had no German, was at a loss to interrogate the fellow as he would have liked to do. My German was not anything to brag about, but, upon trying to talk to him in his own tongue, the boy — for that was all he was — about eighteen or nineteen — answered in English. He said: “We go bombing: we get lost: the shells come so quick I know not what to do. I look back and it is so far: I look here and it is so near. I think this is the better way so I come.” Can you beat that?

But here comes the “coincidence.” He was a youngster named Caspar Meyer, from Sachsenhausen, Waldeck, Bavaria, and I had visited with his family when he was a babe in arms and had, at that time persuaded his elder sister to take up the study of English. It seems that the boy also took it up when he became old enough. Well, he went back — a prisoner of war — but he seemed to be pretty well satisfied at that.

That was, I think, the first prisoner taken by the Twenty-first Battalion. The next was one whom I “captured” as he came over our parapet early one morning — a week or so later — and who turned out to be one of our Intelligence officers but, as he was wearing the full German uniform, I held him up and sent him back under guard. (You ought to have heard him swear.)

After that we picked them up, now and then; perhaps from a patrol, sometimes in a raid; but the first time we saw them in large numbers was during the St. Eloi fight. The Fusiliers and the Yorks grabbed off several hundred and sent them back through our lines. It seems that there was a story current in the German army that the Canadians always killed all prisoners and when these fellows found that they were to go through the Canadian lines they begged like good fellows. However they had to do it and, lo and behold, at every cook’s dug-out, they were served with tea and whatever else was available. Captors and captives fared alike and one poor little rascal who was so worn out that he could hardly struggle along, found a bed in my dugout and slept there all day — with my connivance, of course — and then made his own way back to our reserve lines.

In the actual heat of battle, when it comes to the final, hand-to-hand struggle, men revert to the elemental level of wild beasts and display the ferocity of a trapped tiger, killing remorselessly and indiscriminately, but, once the prisoner has been taken and sent to the rear, all such animosity is forgotten and he is treated very much as one of our own. Of course I know nothing of the conduct of the Germans in this respect or of our men who were taken prisoner (by the way, here is a good place to remark that the 21st never lost a man by capture), but I suppose it was about the same. Of course prisoners in the hands of the Germans did not get much to eat but neither did their captors — according to our standard of living, so they could not complain much on that score.

Later on — during the Somme battle, I saw them literally by the thousand (that is, German prisoners), and they all seemed to take their fate very philosophically. Evidently they had been well instructed as to how to act if captured. I have talked with many of them and have been present when they were interrogated by our intelligence officers and I never saw one who refused to give his name and regiment. (That is all any prisoner can be compelled to tell.) Sometimes they would tell a lot more — possibly true; perhaps not, but they all appeared to take the fact of their being captured as just a part of the war game and did not seem to grieve over-much about it. Some, I was inclined to think, were damn glad of it — glad to get out of it so easily. I can readily understand that attitude, although I never quite got to the point where I wanted to try it myself.

They went back to the barbed-wire stockades and from there to the permanent prison camps. Most of them were put to work on the roads or the docks at the sea-ports and appeared to be quite content to stay there and let the war take care of itself.

At first our men were so eager to get “souvenirs” that most of the prisoners went back sans belts or buttons but we always paid for them.

We would exchange French script (money) for German marks and gave them a fair price for anything we took. Later, we had no time for such trifles and, excepting for weapons, let them keep everything they had. I suppose the military police and other non-combatants back at the rear probably cleaned up on them, however.

Chapter 12. Duds, Misfires and Stuck Bolts

THIS is not supposed to be a history of the war but a story for riflemen, so we will have to skip along, sketching in the general operations and looking for places to “take a shot.”

During the latter stages of the St. Eloi operation there was scant opportunity for the rifleman. It was mostly a case of bomb ’em out of a crater and then get shelled out, yourself, the next day. All these minor actions took place at night but the days were not dull, by any means, as our positions were most persistently bombarded all the time.

I just happened to look at the calendar. Next Sunday will be Easter — and April 20th. A friend, sitting beside me, remarked that it was the latest he ever remembered Easter to come. Well; I remember one time it came a day later — April 21, 1916.