Brave Battalion (9 page)

But not only negligent French fortification work disgusted the Canadians. More germane, one divisional report claimed, was that the defences were in a “deplorable state and in a very filthy condition, all the little broken down side trenches and shell holes apparently being used as latrines and burial places for bodies.” Behind the Canadian Scottish position both the communication trenches leading to the rear and the open ground behind the front lines were littered with French dead, either half buried or left sprawling on the surface. Many times a soldier started digging only to disinter a French corpse.
⁴⁰

On that first morning in the Ypres Salient, Captain William Rae, who commanded No. 2 Company, looked over a parapet with binoculars toward the German lines and puzzled over oddities in the way the enemy frontage was constructed. “The whole top of it had been pulled about and altered, and there were various openings in it, unlike anything seen before.” Rae reported his observations to battalion headquarters, which could make no sense of the German changes and so did not pass the intelligence up the line.
⁴¹
That the openings were points enabling hoses linked to poison gas cylinders to release their contents was never considered. Although intelligence gathered had alerted the high command that a chemical warfare attack might be imminent, nobody at the lowly level of 1
^st
Canadian Infantry Division had been advised of the danger. So the Canadian Scottish set to improving their defensive works, fearful only of being struck down by shell or bullet as April 22 drew ever closer—when the division would face its first true battle in the most cataclysmic day the war had yet seen.

- APRIL 22-MAY 4, 1915 -

The British Expeditionary Force had no idea a German offensive was in the works. Instead, Brigadier Field Marshal Sir John French had confidently expected to wrest the initiative into his hands with a British assault on Hill 60 in the southern sector of the Ypres Salient on April 17. This 60-metre hill was really just a tailing pile created during construction of the Ypres-Comines railway in the 1860s, but standing atop the Messines-Passchendaele ridge crest it provided the highest point overlooking the salient, and its loss would deny German artillery spotters an ideal vantage.

To facilitate the attack British engineers had tunneled under Hill 60 and emplaced five mines each loaded with five tons of explosives. Just before the 13
^th
Brigade of II Corps's 5
^th
Division led the assault forward, the mines were set off in one earth-shattering detonation. The German garrison on the hill was decimated, many bodies and body parts hurled pin-wheeling through the air. Fifteen minutes later the British infantry started digging in on the smoking and hugely holed earth mound. German reaction was swift; the hill was subjected to withering artillery fire and repeated counterattacks that came close to throwing the British off. But they hung on tenaciously through four days of bitter fighting. Finally, 5
^th
Division's alarming casualty rate became so severe that on April 21 Brig. Malcolm Smith Mercer's 1
^st
Canadian Infantry Brigade was sent as reinforcements, warned to be ready to join the beleaguered troops on Hill 60 at only an hour's notice.
¹
Mercer's 2
^nd
and 4
^th
Battalions were consequently standing by in forward trenches as the Germans put in motion a devastating attack they hoped would force the Allies to abandon the salient entirely.

A deep bulge thrusting about four miles into the German line, the Ypres Salient had been created at the end of October 1914. Salients are naturally dangerous because the troops inside them are exposed to attack from three flanks. But they also require the opponent to commit sufficient forces to guard these three sides, meaning the Ypres Salient was tethering thousands of Germans in place who might have been committed to offensive operations elsewhere. This was precisely why the Allies saw it as strategically vital real estate to hold onto while the Germans equally sought its elimination.

Having lain in readiness since April 15, while waiting for the fickle prevailing winds that would carry the gas into the Allied lines to turn in their favour, conditions finally were right for the Germans on the morning of April 22. The German plan envisioned only two corps—the XXIII Reserve and XXVI Reserve—advancing across a four-mile front to Pilckem Ridge, which was delineated by the Boesinghe-Pilckem-Langemarck-Poelcappelle road. Here the Germans would dig in, their presence on the ridge expected to render it “impossible for the enemy to remain longer in the Ypres salient.”
²
The decision to limit the scope of the attack reflected German ambivalence over the attack's purpose. While pinching out the salient was desirable, this offensive arose to achieve two other goals deemed more important. First, the offensive should divert Allied attention away from the Russian front where the Austro-German armies were concentrating for a major offensive in Galicia. Second, it would test the use of poison gas on the battlefield.

Although a signatory to the 1899 and 1906 Hague Conventions banning chemical warfare, Germany had started developing gas weapons in late 1914 for assaults on “positions which were constructed with all the modern methods of the art of fortification.” Soon German scientists had the means to release “chlorine gas as a cloud, propelled towards the enemy by a suitable wind.” Chlorine, a staple in the dye industry, was readily available and cheap, and could be confined as a gas in existing cylinders. By 1915 Germany was producing thirty-seven tons of chlorine gas daily. Just five days' worth of this production—loaded into 6,000 cylinders—was required for the attack. Although cheap and convenient to produce, chlorine gas remained a crude weapon. Much heavier than air, the gas was slow to dissipate and clung to the ground like a heavy fog, dependent on the all-important wind to carry it in the right direction. Chlorine gas, however, was a brutal weapon that attacked the lungs and immediately incapacitated anyone exposed to it. For the Germans following behind, the gas would serve well. It left no noticeable residue in its wake, and being a visible green cloud, it was easy not to advance into its deadly wake.

The Germans had finished deploying 5,730 gas cylinders and the troops forming the assault wave across a 1,200-yard front running from west of Poelcappelle to a little east of Steenstraat eleven days before the winds finally permitted the attack to proceed. With each passing day, preventing the Allies from discovering the cylinders or concentration of soldiers became more difficult. The Canadian Scottish company commander, Captain William Rae, had not been alone in filing a report about the strange openings appearing at intervals along the German front. A couple of deserters also offered precise intelligence that predicted an imminent gas attack. But British high command gave the reports little credence and French Army general headquarters was even more dismissive, resorting to scolding one divisional commander who instructed his men to prepare themselves to withstand a gas assault. “All this gas business,” the French officer was told, “need not be taken seriously.” As a result, on April 22 the Allies were completely unprepared.
³

The Canadian Division at this time held Second Army's left flank, a 4,500-yard front astride a low valley through which flowed the Stroombeek, a tributary of the Steenbeek River. Winding along at distances of one to 2,000 yards behind the division's front was Gravenstafel Ridge, which drew its name from a small hamlet close to the Canadian boundary line with the 28
^th
British Division on its right. To the left was the 45
^th
Algerian Division with the dividing line between these French troops and the Canadians being a road running south from German-held Poelcappelle to Ypres.

On this Thursday, 3
^rd
Canadian Infantry Brigade was deployed next to the Algerians with 2
^nd
Canadian Infantry Brigade to its right. The divisional reserve was provided by 1
^st
Canadian Infantry Brigade, which was also on standby to possibly relieve the British troops embattled on Hill 60. The two brigades holding the front each had two battalions forward, one a short way back providing close support, and its fourth battalion stationed as divisional reserve on the northern outskirts of Ypres.
⁴
Brig. Richard Turner's 3
^rd
Brigade had the 13
^th
Royal Highlanders and the 15
^th
(48
^th
Highlanders) forward, with the 14
^th
Royal Montreal Regiment providing close support. The Canadian Scottish were back in divisional reserve. Turner's brigade headquarters was in St. Julien.
⁵

On this morning Lt.-Col. Leckie had his No. 3 and No. 4 companies placed around a little village called la Brique, which lay east of the Canal de l'Yser within a stone's throw of St. Jean. His other two companies were positioned on the northern edge of Ypres where a factory stood at the head of the canal. Turner's battalion headquarters was on the Rue Dixmude—a road paralleling the canal that led to city centre. When the Germans began shelling the French sector immediately west of the battalion, Leckie ordered the two companies at la Brique moved farther out on the flank so they were hard up against the canal's west bank just outside of Ypres, across the water from the nearest Algerian troops.
⁶

Leckie did not act out of any sense of alarm. The tactical move was just a standard precaution in response to the German artillery fire. In the Canadian lines, the air was relaxed with the Canadian Scottish forming by platoons to receive their back pay and learn whether they were among the lucky few to be granted an extended leave period. As the day was milder than normal, some took the opportunity to bathe in the canal while others strolled off into the battered city of Ypres.

This seemingly peaceful day was shattered at 1600 hours by a “furious cannonade” that dropped shells immediately north and west of St. Julien and directly onto Ypres. No. 4 Company's second-in-command, Captain George Willis Jameson, and Lt. Hugh Urquhart rushed up to the top of the canal bank and endeavoured to make out “what sort of fight was going on, there could be no doubt that the enemy were advancing as the shrapnel bursts got nearer and nearer until at last the road east of the Canal from Ypres to Boesinghe was being shelled. We instinctively felt that it was necessary for us to ‘stand to' and, on coming down to the billet, found orders for the Company to fall in. The order was carried out in quick time.”
⁷

Some officers had just been sitting down to a buffet tea at battalion headquarters when they “heard a huge shell coming in with the noise of an express train, such as one we hadn't ever heard before. When the terrific crash of the explosion took place I looked from under the buffet and some of the others were under the table. I consider we all acted with one thought and did excellent time. … We sat down to resume our meal and all was quiet again, when suddenly we heard the warning roar in the air. Again, like streaks of lightning we were in our corners. This time the crash was just outside our door. The glass blew in on the table and there was a crash of timber and falling brick-work. Then they started in earnest, shells, large and small, poured into the town. The cries of the people mingled with the crash of the houses falling to bits, the stampeding of frantic horses, and the shouts of the troops rushing to their quarters. There was the wildest confusion.”
⁸

Brigade quickly ordered Leckie to move his battalion up the side of the canal to a point just north of Ypres and hold there in readiness for an immediate advance. Once in position, many of the men took cover in an old trench system while those unable to squeeze in began digging slit trenches.
⁹

At about 1730 hours, Brig. Turner received a report that “the French on our left were being subjected to heavy artillery bombardment, accompanied by the projection of a pale green cloud of gas of a peculiarly pungent odour. There was at the time some doubt as to whether the gas emanated from the Germans or from the French trenches, but it was shortly determined that it was being used by the enemy to overcome resistance.”
¹⁰

The Germans had opened the valves on their cylinders precisely at 1700 hours, releasing more than 160 tons of deadly gas over a period of six to eight minutes on the long-awaited northeasterly breeze. One gas cloud first seemed to be closing on the Canadian lines but it then shifted to drift across the Algerian front and joined with other green-yellow concentrations that created a towering, impenetrable, greenish-yellow fog.
¹¹
Drifting steadily along at five to six miles an hour, the giant cloud was about a half-mile deep by the time it entered the Algerian lines and those of the 87
^th
Territorial Division at its side. There was instant pandemonium, the gas burning men's throats and eyes, causing intense chest pains, and making it virtually impossible to draw breath. Soldiers began spitting blood and many collapsed dizzily and then suffocated. Those who survived fled the trenches.
¹²