The Yukon Battery was in the heart of the action. What followed was a constant cycle to the front, where they provided direct fire and barrage support along the Ypres (Belgium) Salient—a tiny piece of northwestern Belgium, including the town of Ypres, still held by the Allies, that protruded into the German line—then went back to the rear lines for rest and recovery. Over the next two months, they alternated between billets and the front line. Behind the lines they rested and trained, and cared for their equipment. Much time was spent at gun instruction, gun practice and filling machine gun belts. On September 16, they covered a raiding party that penetrated enemy lines in a night raid. On September 22, they opened fire on an enemy working party. “Enemy machine guns tried to locate our positions but failed,” reported the entry in the battery war diary for that day.88 On October 15, Privates McKinley and Bloor were wounded during routine duty installing splinter-proof shelters.
On October 21, the Yukon Battery, now attached to the 4th Canadian Division, became involved in the assault of Regina Trench (named Staufen Riegel by the Germans), a lengthy enemy trench system that was positioned behind the devastated French village of Courcelette on the Somme battlefield. According to historian Tim Cook: “The Somme battlefield was a wasteland of ruined farmers’ fields; scummy, water-filled shell holes; and acres of unburied corpses… not a single metre of the war zone had escaped being chewed up by artillery fire… The mixture of blackened flesh and broken bones with thousands of tonnes of metal and shattered structures created a nightmare landscape.”89
As for the village of Courcelette, like many others, Lieutenant A.B. Morkill, who had been a bank manager in Victoria before coming to the Somme, noted: “The battle-fields are indescribable. What villages there were, are as flat as ploughed fields, and most certainly the country is one of desolation. Not a tree, but occasionally the stump of one to accentuate the barrenness, and at night when it is lit up by the flames and flashes of the guns, it leaves the impression of a very modern hell.”90
It was this shell-blasted wasteland that they sought to capture. The attack commenced at six minutes after noon with a heavy barrage. The Yukon Battery was positioned parallel to Sugar Trench and provided heavy barrage support. At first, it was an all-out burst of intense fire from each machine gun that lasted for twenty minutes, followed by a reduced rate of one hundred rounds per minute, and then slackened to fifty rounds per minute. The pace of firing varied but continued throughout the afternoon and overnight.
The Regina Trench was pounded into oblivion by the artillery barrage, which was supported by the planned machine gun barrage. Behind the carefully designed creeping barrage, Canadian infantry were able to advance and take the German positions. A curtain of lead from Canadian machine gun fire effectively prevented a successful counterattack by the Germans. The machine gunners were not so much trying to hit specific targets as they were trying to drench the area with bullets, thus forcing the enemy to take cover while Canadian troops advanced. Those members of each gun crew not actively firing their weapon were kept busy bringing a steady supply of ammunition to the emplacements.
So intense was the rate of fire by the Yukon Battery that one soldier, Frank McAlpine, was sent to hospital, overcome by the noxious gasses emitted by the machine gun during the continuous firing.91 The Yukoners were lucky, having come in at the very end of the Battle of the Somme, an offensive that started four months earlier and gained little at great expense of lives. A million combined casualties were inflicted upon the Germans and the Allies during this offensive; more than twenty-four thousand of them were Canadian.
Through the end of October and into November, the Yukon Battery followed its daily firing orders. Things became routine until, on November 15, Private Bob Ellis was hit in the head by a piece of shrapnel in the trenches near Courcelette. His fellow Yukoners carried him to a dressing station 3 kilometres distant. He was still breathing when they arrived but later died.92
Then, on November 18, the Yukon Battery was engaged in a major offensive action providing barrage support to the Canadian 10th Brigade over Grandcourt Trench. The barrage commenced at 10:00 a.m., and the machine guns spat lead continuously for the next six hours, and then provided continuing covering fire through the night until dawn of the following day. Captain Meurling, the commanding officer, reported: “It is impossible for me to lay too much stress on the enthusiasm, endurance and general good behaviour of both men and officers during the whole of these trying 36 hours, out of which 24 hours were spent under practically continuous firing.”93 These men, he noted, had already been on the line for five to six days before the offensive began. Heavy enemy shelling of their positions did not make their assignment any easier. Three of their guns were put out of action when two emplacements and a dugout were blown up. Miraculously, there were no casualties.
Captain Meurling praised his men for their ability to work the guns when under intense fire: “As long as any of them are left to teach the new ones our infantry will never lack the support that M/Guns, when properly handled, can give them, both before during and specially after a battle”94 By November 19, they had expended 550,000 rounds of ammunition during this engagement.
Compared to the preceding months, which were filled with constant combat duty, the Yukon Motor Machine Gun Battery spent a quiet December, based at Divion, 25 kilometres from Vimy on the front. They did active duty laying down fire at La Folie Farm, perched near the top of Vimy Ridge, and adjacent roads, followed by time spent behind the line recovering and resting. Belt filling, machine gun instruction and drills occupied much of their time. On December 13, Captain Meurling and the Yukon men were decorated with the Military Medals they had earned in the battle at Grandcourt Trench the month before. Several men from the Yukon Battery were singled out for recognition: Privates David Roulston, Harry Walker and Ernest Peppard, as well as Corporal Anthony Blaikie and Sergeant Frank McAlpine. Sergeant McAlpine was not available to receive his medal, as he had returned to England to train for a commission.
Harry Walker was a good example of a Yukon volunteer. Raised in Victoria, British Columbia, he came north during the early days of the gold rush and was engaged in mining on Sulphur Creek. In the spring of 1915, he joined the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles, subsequently transferring to the armoured motor battalion. Walker was awarded the Military Medal for his “devotion to duty displayed when he assembled a machine gun under heavy fire” during the November 19 offensive:
In the midst of a heavy bombardment of the British Lines by enemy guns, Private Walker and two of his comrades, showing utter contempt for the existing danger, moved out into the open and assembled their machine gun at a point where the fire could be effectively directed against the German positions. Just as they got the gun properly mounted a German shell buried itself in the ground immediately in front and undid their work by disarranging and burying some of the parts. In the face of all hazards they managed to secure the parts, put them together again and were eventually able to operate the gun against the enemy with telling effect.95
Christmas came and went and the Boyle men were able to enjoy a belated Christmas feast on December 28. They had been initiated with a baptism of lead, gas and steel. They had proven themselves in battle; many had received decorations for their courageous actions. By war’s end, nineteen had been decorated, but thirteen had paid the supreme sacrifice, and others were casualties unable to continue in combat. They didn’t know it, but yet to come were some of the most brutal battles of the war: Vimy, Passchendaele, Amiens and the Hundred Days Offensive. Only a handful of the original fifty would remain in uniform by the armistice.
The Black Contingent
“Month by month I could see that George was growing more restless,” wrote Martha Black about her husband, the commissioner of the Yukon. In her diary, she noted:
George has just come in and told me he has to enlist—that he cannot stand it any longer, seeing our men go away, while he sits in his office and we have the comfort of this beautiful home.
Of course, there’s nothing for me to do but to act as though I like it. It will be a wrench—to leave this lovely place. There’s the dreadful anxiety of our future, too. What will this horrible war bring forth? I dare not think of it. Yet why should I hesitate or try to keep him back? Thousands,