No officer, I don’t care who he is, can sit back in his headquarters and say that this man or that squad can do such and such. To even get up to where the real fighting is requires almost incredible endurance and devotion to duty. Always will these men have to go through one or more barrages of artillery fire, and rifle and machine gun bullets will be continually picking off men, here and there. Probably it will be raining — it always seems to do that when there is a fight on — and the mud will further handicap the burden bearers.
There is one way the situation might be relieved, to have special tanks to carry up the ammunition; but, hells-bells, if we have enough tanks for that, why not let them go over and rout out the enemy, themselves?
No, gentlemen, what with all the machine guns, automatic rifles, bombers, wire cutters and what not, you’d better let the little old rifleman carry on with his simple magazine rifle. Out of every hundred men in the infantry, perhaps ten are really qualified to rate as
Take these men (assuming you can find ten out of every hundred who can qualify) and arm them with the very best type of “Sporters,” equipped with both telescopic and modern iron sights and turn them loose during an engagement. Their functions will be to afford a protective screen for the machine guns and trench mortars and to take advantage of every opportunity to harass the enemy. They will also prove effective in
The full war strength of a company being two hundred and fifty men, when you have taken out your twenty- five riflemen and all the other specialists there will not be very many left, so if you want to arm them with automatic arms, well and good. In defensive positions, where large reserves of ammunition may be accumulated, this probably would be quite satisfactory, but in any attack where the line is continually moving forward I am of the opinion that it will be found impossible to supply these men with sufficient ammunition to make it worth while. We found that it required the services of six men to keep one automatic rifle going (Lewis gun), and, as above described, it took sixteen men to the gun to supply the heavy machine guns with ammunition. What is going to happen when each man has an automatic?
I have been asked to state how much ammunition a soldier can carry. Well; I have often carried a case — 1200 rounds — from the ordnance depot to our tent, at Camp Perry. Stronger men could probably carry more. Any individual can decide this matter to his own satisfaction by going out and trying it. See how much you can carry, on a hot day.
With his rifle, his haversack, water bottle and bayonet, a soldier already has quite a load. Add to that the regulation hundred rounds of ammunition which he will carry in his belt and an extra bandolier around his neck — which is always getting in the way and frequently “ditched” — well, you do not have to actually go to war to be able to figure out just about what will happen.
Nothing is impossible. Now, of course, that is merely a much overworked platitude and I do not know whether it is strictly in accordance with the theories of Dr. Einstein or the decrees of Congress, but what I mean is that, with our limited knowledge of the laws of Mother Nature and the daily discoveries of our research scientists, it seems to me to be the height of folly to declare, flatly, that there is anything within the limits of our comprehension that “cannot be done.”
Have you ever noticed that practically every new invention has had its place in war? It may have been evolved for some of the prosaic occupations of peaceful times but let there come a war and all these little tricks are quickly adapted to the use of the fighters. Outstanding among the more recent innovations are the airplane, the radio and the tank. The latter, originally designed to enable the farmer to drag a gang of plows over rough and muddy land, has now become one of the most formidable factors in warfare. I well remember the day they made their initial bow to the world in general and the Germans in particular. September 15, 1916, during the great Somme battle, these monsters first took to the field. Crude as they were at that time, they must have caused almost as much consternation in the enemy ranks, as the gas did to ours when first used. If my memory serves me right, there were thirty-five of them, great, ugly, ungainly things, and our own men were just as much surprised to see them as were the enemy. They waddled and snorted across the field, trampling down machine-gun emplacements and generally making themselves useful until the enemy guns found them, and by direct hits managed to put several out of commission. One, in particular, I remember, half capsized alongside the road. It did not appear to be seriously damaged but was, temporarily, at least, out of commission. As I remember it, a shell had knocked off one of the trailing wheels which, I think, were the “rudders” of the thing and another shell, bursting under one side, had toppled it over into the ditch. On its side was inscribed, in large letters, the name
That was the beginning. What the end will be nobody knows. Recent developments in the line of mechanizing the army have been so rapid that it will not surprise me in the least to see battles fought by whole fleets of these land “Dreadnaughts” accompanied by their fast “cruisers” and squadrons of the little “whippets” taking the place of the destroyer screen, following the same tactics as the armadas of the navy. Armed, as the larger ones now are, with rapid-fire guns of heavy caliber, they could certainly put up a fight worth going miles to see.
But all these cumbersome fighting machines — and that includes the whole category of tanks, airplanes and rigid and semi-rigid aircraft — must have certain bases from which they can operate. They are susceptible to many and varied indispositions which must be nursed and treated by a corps of experienced practitioners. To enable them to operate efficiently for a week, they must have at least a day or two in the shop. These infirmities will, no doubt, be minimized, but probably never entirely eliminated. Well, who is going to ride herd on these cripples when they are in the home corral? More tanks? Hardly. Those in condition for action will be needed elsewhere. No, it will be the everlasting, ubiquitous doughboy, with his little rifle, who will inherit the job of standing off any attack.
It is quite within the bounds of reason that this same foot-soldier will be armed with something more efficient than the present-day rifle. Some genius may evolve a method for squirting the juice of the grape-fruit into the other fellow’s eye at a range of two or three miles or one of our up and coming radio fiends may find a way to extract static and use it for a lethal weapon, but, of one thing I feel sure, it will be the individual soldier, with his individual weapon, who will have to come in and take charge after the ruction is over; so, until something more efficient has been perfected, let us do the best we can with our rifles.
Upon receiving notice that I had been commissioned as a First Lieutenant (June 19, 1916) I also received my orders to report at our old base camp at Sandling — in England.
A brigade, in the British service, consists of four battalions of active troops, with another, so-called reserve or depot battalion. Our Brigade — the Fourth — comprised the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth and Twenty-first as active Service Battalions, with the Thirty-ninth as the “Base” Battalion. Now this base or reserve or depot battalion — whatever you want to call it — is the training place for the “replacement” troops for the others and from it are sent the officers and men needed to fill the gaps in the active units.
That was the kind of job I inherited, working as an instructor at the base camp. It was not a bad sort of a job for one who just wanted to go to war without actually getting into it. (I had the same sort in the U.S. Army in 1917 and 1918.) But it just did not appeal to me and I was glad of the opportunity to get back to France and the scene of action, during the latter part of the Somme battle.
Chapter 13. The Somme
WELL, here we are, down on the Somme. “What’s that? Didn’t know we had moved? Thought we were still up at Ypres? Hell, no. We moved down here in August, while you were over in Blighty, in hospital or something; probably running around and having a good time with the girls. Had a month or so back of the lines trying to learn something about these new Enfield rifles after they took the Ross away from us.”
That is about the way I was received when I rejoined my outfit in September, 1916, after having been absent since June. But before I found my own people I had an interesting experience. At Boulogne, as I received my traveling orders from the R.T.O., it happened that I was the only Canadian in a bunch of officers, the others being
