A Rifleman Went to War

battlefield was so readily made that suddenly the interminable delay seemed a thing of the far past and war was an old game. The first shell-torn house was a tragic curiosity; but shortly they moved among them as quite natural phenomena. The first dead left a strange gap; but the others simply faded away. The Battalion went in — and some did not come out. And again.

One did not realize the total effect unless, by some chance, one happened to be at the transport lines when the battalion got together again. It was “closed up.” One had perhaps planned a dinner of “eggs and chips” with a bottle of vin ordinaire to celebrate this brief return to civilization. One of the proposed party was missing.

But not until one returned from leave was there anxious scanning of the ranks for familiar faces. With this perspective, they seemed changed. Then, one understood that they were changed, that there were many new faces. One waited uncertainly for this platoon or that, to pick out one or another to share talk of the visit to London: “He’s out of it, Mac.” “Dead” “No; Blighty; but good for the duration, and then some — leg gone.”

A score or so of others, also just returned, were having similar experiences: “where’s Red?” “Gone West.” “Say, Signaller, your long friend’s off on the long trek.” “Aye; I can tell you all about it if you want to write his wife.”

It was quite simple. In a day or two the ranks were filled up. And now and then an old face would reappear, a trifle white and awkwardly fresh in a new uniform. It was the slow business of war. In the end, perhaps two hundred of the “originals” returned to Canada. Something more than a thousand had gone out.

But at no time was there sign of concern, or even awareness, as to the ultimate end of this gradual decimation. They carried on with the work in hand. The Battalion was but one — and not the first. These men would never have to endure what the First Division had endured, unprotected and without warning.

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Readers of history are familiar with the stories of human fortitude as exemplified by the Greeks at Thermopalye and we all have read of “Horatius at the Bridge” and other similar legendary tales of stark courage.

Far be it from me to dispute or to endeavor to disparage the exploits of those ancient heroes, but I most humbly submit the opinion that the stand of the Canadians at Ypres, when subjected to the ordeal of poison gas — the hellish concoction, conceived by that utterly unfathomable thing, the German mind — must take first rank as an epic of human courage and devotion to duty.

There, outnumbered more than four to one, with weak artillery support and but few machine guns, they met and stopped the advance of the enemy horde.

And they did it with rifle fire.

There, during those momentous days from April 23 to May 8, 1915, died many of the flower of Canadian chivalry, among them that gallant gentleman; that sterling rifleman, Lieutenant Colonel Hart McHarg; who had come over with the invading Canadian rifle team to Camp Perry in 1913, and captured the Individual Palma Trophy from the best shots we could pit against him.

To the men who fought under the Maple Leaf of Canada, the story of the achievements of those immortals of the first Division is as sacred as the Gospels. During the succeeding years of the war, each Division, as it came to the front, tried to emulate the exploits of the First.

Ypres: The Somme: Vimy Ridge: Passchendaele: Amiens: Arras: Cambrai: Valenciennes: Mons: — all are emblazoned in letters of gold on the Canadian escutcheon — but the greatest of these is YPRES.

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