“As a matter of fact,” wrote one of the volunteers, “we are all rather ashamed to be here so long in England, but there seems to be no way of getting machine guns with which to equip us.”79
The year passed, and still the men had not seen action. Meanwhile, back home, the IODE and the civil servants of the Yukon each raised $1,000, and two cheques in that amount were sent to Ottawa for the purchase of two machine guns. Over the winter, the Boyle men remained at Shorncliffe and were formed into a battery that was later attached to the 4th Canadian Division.80 In late February, they were moved from their comfortable billets into tents, which they found very disagreeable in the damp, cold winter.
The training for machine gun units was rigorous and physically demanding. Many volunteers found themselves transferred to other units if they didn’t meet the standard. Leading commanders in the British forces did not grasp the tactical significance of the machine gun during the early years of the war. The generals did not see the need for them or to revise their tactical thinking. Machine guns were viewed as contrary to all accepted military practice. Tight formations by foot soldiers with bayonets fixed were the order of the day, and as a consequence, tens of thousands of soldiers, many of them Canadians, were sent to deaths that could have been avoided.81 The machine gun took the nobility out of warfare. It was industrial-scale slaughter.
The hidebound structure of the British chain of command was not inclined toward subtlety and manoeuvre but rather believed that only the greatest display of moral fibre would win the day. By this structured thinking, soldiers who hesitated to advance under machine gun fire were not showing the stern qualities of a good soldier. A bold charge of infantry would cause the enemy lines to break and run, and the waiting cavalry would ride through the gap on their horses and take the line. As one observer noted:
In Britain, class was everything. The command and fabric of the British Army has been described by one critic as having “stiffened into a sort of Byzantine formalism.” The other ranks, who belonged to the lower class, were expected to obey orders without question and without any real knowledge of the military situation, which was considered too deep and complicated for them to grasp. Such was the gap between officers and men that any private soldier who did try to ask a question of his seniors was considered by his own fellows a traitor to his own class.82
The combatants dug into opposing defensive lines zigzagging across northern France, for hundreds of kilometres from the North Sea coast to Switzerland. They were occupied by hundreds of thousands of soldiers—German and Austrian on one side, French, English, Australian, New Zealander and Canadian on the other. They called it the Western Front. The Allies’ combat strategy quickly resulted in a stalemate in which the Germans had dug trenches and established defensive positions using machine guns with overlapping fields of fire, hidden behind rows of barbed wire. Such positions were virtually impregnable and could only be broken at terrible cost. “Three men with a machine gun can stop a battalion of heroes,” noted one observer.83 Then there were snipers hidden in nooks and crannies, their sharpshooting rifles trained upon the opposite line. If anyone dared to lift their head above the top of the trench, they risked getting it blown off. Between these lines lay No Man’s Land. Varying in width from one hundred to several hundred metres, it was a zone in which nothing lived, and any man foolish enough to enter it quickly died. The men on the front lines figured this out almost immediately. The high command, securely positioned kilometres away from the action, and aloof from the enlisted men, denied this reality for far too long.
Between 1914 and 1918, the machine gun became the defining instrument of death for hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides of the conflict. By the time the Boyle detachment had made its way into the theatre of war, the Vickers machine gun was the weapon of choice. These guns had withering firepower, capable of firing up to five hundred rounds per minute. They required a team of five men to operate, because of their size and insatiable appetite for gunpowder and lead. They were heavy and awkward to carry from one position to another on the pitted landscape of No Man’s Land. The gun itself weighed 13 kilograms, plus another 4.5 kilograms if the water jacket was full. The tripod weighed nearly 22 kilograms. Each ammunition box, which carried a cloth belt containing 250 rounds, weighed 9.5 kilograms. Given that they could run through two belts of ammunition every minute, it was a full-time job providing a constant supply of bullets. With the high volume of fire that machine guns were capable of, the spent casings would soon bury a gun emplacement; the support team was kept busy filling sandbags with spent cartridges, which were stockpiled and hauled to nearby dumps, where they would be removed by salvage companies for recycling.84
One soldier, Private George Coppard, described the procedure for setting up a Vickers machine gun to fire:
Number One dashed five yards with the tripod, released the ratchet held front legs so they swung forward, both pointing outwards, and secured them rigidly by tightening the ratchet handles. Sitting down, he removed two metal pins from the head of the tripod, whereupon Number Two placed the gun in position on the tripod. Number One whipped in the pins and then the gun was ready for loading. Number Three dashed forward with an ammunition box containing a canvas belt, pocketed to hold 250 rounds. Number Two inserted the tag-end of the belt into the feed block on the right side of the gun. Number One grabbed the tag-end and jerked it through, at the same time pulling back on the crank handle twice, which completed the loading operation.85
Once this was done, the Number One gunner flipped up the sights and was ready to fire. If properly placed along the battlefront, with well-designed overlap in their fields of fire, these machine guns could lay down an impenetrable and deadly curtain of lead. To attempt to enter into this field of fire would be disastrous for the enemy.
In order for each gun emplacement to operate smoothly, a constant stream of supplies had to be brought forward. Ammunition belts, water, lubricating oil and spare barrels, as well as replacement personnel in case of casualty, had to be kept in reserve. To work successfully, each machine gun team had to be well trained and ready to deal with all sorts of contingencies, from replacing another member of the team to repairing malfunctions quickly and efficiently. The training continued for months as the Boyle men waited for their orders to go to the front.
In June 1916, the Boyle unit was renamed the Yukon Motor Machine Gun Battery, but still they had seen no action.86 Captain Harry F. Meurling, from the instructional staff of the Canadian Machine Gun School, was placed in charge, with Lieutenants Nicholson, Harkness and Strong under his command.87 Captain Meurling, born in Sweden and later trained as a civil engineer, had seen service with the Swedish Royal Navy and in the Belgian Congo force before enlisting in Sherbrooke, Quebec, the previous year. Meurling would command the Yukon units for the remainder of the war.
Finally, on August 15, 1916, they shipped out for France aboard the SS Nirvana. This is what they had trained for, for so many months. Now fully equipped to go into combat, they were eager to get to the front. They did not know where that would be, and they had only a vague idea of what to expect when they got there. For the men of the Yukon Battery, the war was about to begin.
The Battlefields of France
The Yukon Battery arrived in Le Havre, France, the morning of August 16 and quickly made their way to Number 2 Rest Camp, at Sanvie, just outside Le Havre. From there, they moved steadily forward until they reached the camp of the 1st Canadian Motor Machine Gun Brigade at Abeele, Belgium. Now designated E Battery, they immediately took up position on gun emplacements.
Captain Harry Meurling commanded the Yukon (Boyle) battery, and later the 2nd Motor Machine