After standing around for what seemed like half the night, we were rushed aboard the ferry and ushered into what had was once been a dining salon. It was now emptied of all its original furnishings and was instead provided with a series of crudely made wooden benches. It struck me at the time that the normal comforts provided to the human race were deliberately downgraded and replaced with crude makeshift arrangements when it came to providing services for soldiers. It was not the last occasion I would be reminded of that observation.
The ship sailed an hour later. Our channel passage was a rough one and the ferry rolled and pitched like a cork. For such a short journey, we were a ridiculously long time at sea, and most of us were sick throughout the trip. I don’t know what made the crossing more unpleasant, the ship’s motion or being confined in close quarters with so many other men who were violently ill.
At Le Havre, our ferry docked shortly after dawn but for some inexplicable reason we were again required to wait on board for several hours. No explanation was ever given for our wait. When we disembarked, we were once again herded into a train station in a roughly fenced holding area and told to await further orders.
Across the yard from us, separated by a wooden fence, were the freshly trained reinforcements destined for the British Third Division. They looked haggard and pale, presumably after having spent an even more wretched night crammed below decks than had we. A British Red Cross refreshment trolley was trundled amongst us. Two pretty young women began unpacking it in order to sell us tea and buns. The two women doing the unpacking were stopped short by a stout, freckled Nova Scotian schoolteacher named Angus Kearsley who demanded in a deep voice, “Are the troops across the fence being served tea as well?”
The Red Cross team leader responded in a very plummy but pleasant English accent, “We have always served this side of the compound their tea first; and then, as soon as that’s done we get to the other side.”
Kearsley replied, “Unless the Third Division troops get their tea first, they’re wasting their time selling tea here.”
The men on the other side of the fence gave a ragged cheer and the two tea ladies graciously pushed their trolley around to the other side. We never did get any tea. It may or may not have sold out before it got to us. Kearsley was more than a little brusque and even though he was guilty of grandstanding, I admired him for his consideration.
Some time later, as we wearily shuffled forward to board the trains to take us to our respective forward areas, I noticed the wooden fencing and the warehouse-like structure surrounding us was probably originally built as a cattle shed that had been converted to a troop marshalling area. I wasn’t yet a superstitious man, but this seemed a very bad sign.
3
WE DETRAINED at a temporary railway siding in the middle of a field with the ugly name of “British Expeditionary Force Picardy Staging Area 3.” Shortly thereafter, we were met by a military motor truck that bounced us several miles along a dirt road to the divisional rear area. The lorry lurched to a halt in a motor vehicle compound two hundred yards beyond a cluster of farm buildings. A pair of dirt-encrusted motorcycle despatch riders lounged on their vehicles.
After struggling to gather my kit, I approached the motorcyclists for directions and was mildly surprised when, as I approached, they both stood up and came to attention and the soldier nearest me saluted smartly. I’d been saluted before and I felt no sense of pride in this, but for a brief instant I was startled by the realization that from that point on I really was going to be making life or death decisions on behalf of dozens of men I had never met before. Probably like everyone else in those circumstances, I felt terribly inadequate.
The despatch rider directed us to one of the barns, where a much cleaner but tired-looking staff officer with red tabs on his collar met us and told us we would be joining our units in due course. After a spate of checking and re-checking various lists, we were pointed in the direction of what had once been a small orchard and told to get some sleep because as soon as arrangements could be made, we would be sent forward to our units. We slept under our ground sheets that night but before I finally fell asleep I spent a long time listening to the distant rumble of artillery fire and imagining what lay before me.
Around noon the next day, the staff officer ambled over to the orchard and advised several of us that before nightfall we’d be leaving to join our units. At around three that afternoon, a ruddy-cheeked soldier with a Patricia’s cap badge and a thick northern England accent arrived and told me he was there to escort me to battalion headquarters. I said my goodbyes to my fellow trainee officers and as the PPCLI was then still serving with the British Twenty-seventh Division, I was headed north.
The Patricia soldier indicated a waiting lorry and when I made to climb aboard the back of it with him he laughed and said, “No, sir, officers ride in the front. The driver knows where to go.”
I asked him, “Is the driver from the battalion?”
The young Patricia smiled and shook his head. “No, sir, these lads never go forward of the battalion rest areas.”
“In that case, I want to ride in the back. I want you to tell me about life in the battalion.”
The soldier’s name was Private Reid. He was originally from a village outside Newcastle. Prior to emigrating to Canada, Reid had served for four years in the Coldstream Guards. He had joined the Princess Patricia’s when they were raised in Ottawa and had fought with the regiment since its arrival in the line nine months before. He was a cheerful sort and readily answered my questions. To my great relief, he showed no concern that I was to be in a position of authority. Like every other young officer, I secretly harboured the fear that veteran troops would somehow refuse to accept me because I was so obviously inexperienced.
The trip from the divisional rear headquarters to the rest billets was a stop-and-start affair. More than once we pulled off the dirt road to allow higher-priority traffic carrying wounded to the rear to pass and we waited for almost a half-hour on one occasion to allow a long mule-train laden with artillery ammunition to go forward.
Reid cheerfully answered my questions and, sensing my anxiety, ended his explanations with comments such as, “Don’t worry, sir; you’ll be fine once you get into the swing of things.” Reid told me that the Patricia’s had been out of the line for twenty-four hours and that he expected them to be in a rest area for another two or three days.
Reid was proud of his unit and I didn’t interrupt him. Men like him were probably in the minority now, as more than two hundred Canadian reinforcements had joined the unit and more were arriving each day. When the lorry lurched to a halt at a shattered hamlet called Loenhoek, Reid showed me the way to battalion headquarters and said, “You’ve got to report directly to the adjutant, sir. I’ll wait and take you up to see the company commander after.”
Like Reid, the adjutant was also a British regular soldier. He was a friendly fellow: disarmingly polite and quietly deferential. He greeted me as if I was a long-lost relative. It was obvious he’d been sleeping, but despite the interruption, he was accommodating and helpful. He apologized that the colonel was off at a conference at Brigade, gave me a well-boiled cup of tea, and briefed me on a map of the area, explaining that the battalion was going back into the line again in two nights time. The unit was short of officers and I was to become a platoon commander in Number Two Company. With business over, he nodded and said, “Right then, Reid can take you to see Captain Adamson.” He shook my hand and I was hustled off to a barn a quarter of a mile distant.
Number Two Company should have been 170 men strong. That day, it was much less than that. The company was divided into four platoons and a headquarters. Each platoon was divided into four sections with a small platoon headquarters group. There were four such company organizations in the battalion. Theoretically, the regiment could have had any number of battalions. The Princess Patricia’s had only