The ground here was low and wet making it impossible to dig trenches, so the front and support lines were built up with sand bags to about shoulder high. This breast’work or parapet had loop holes in it near the top for shooting through. We used to stuff an empty sack into the hole when it was not in use. This kept the light from showing movement behind.
We used crude methods in those early days. Some of the men who came out in 1917 and 1918 will no doubt laugh at some of them, but we did the best we knew how, making use of what was available for offense and defense, and that was not much, I can tell you.
We had a couple of batteries of thirteen pounders (horse artillery) in the hedge rows and willow clumps a few hundred yards behind the front. Further back there were just two sixty pounders that we had brought from Valcartier and one of them blew up quite early in the game. That was the sum total of our artillery support. For machine guns we had three colts guns to a battalion, and we later got hold of an old Vickers maxim and nursed it into service. Brigade M G Cox’s, Div, and M. G. Corps along with various other able supports were unheard of. For hand grenades, we had milk and jam tins filled with any kind of small scrap, loaded with a bursting charge, and with a fuse attachment that had to be lit with a match.
There was another elaborate sort of rig called the hair brush bomb, so called because it had a flat handle and a wee wooden box built on one side were the brush part would be in a long handled hair brush. This was lit the same way. There were generally some men behind in a dugout or shelter on fine days busy at the manufacture of these weapons.
The trenches were anywhere from 200 to 500 yards apart along this sector and the first few days I certainly took a very keen interest in bombarding anything that looked as though it would do for a target. I had a long Mk 3 Ross with an aperture sight on the receiver bridge and hooded front blade sight. It had a perfect barrel making for some wonderful shots and I enjoyed myself immensely.
As yet we took it all in good spirits and more in fun than otherwise. I remember how we used to laugh about it when Fritz occasionally spread a salvo of whiz bangs or 16 lb shells along our trench and made the sand bags fly.
I got a lesson quite early in the game that set me to thinking, leading me to temper my enthusiasm with the use of a little caution and better judgment. I had been doing a lot of target practice from one particular loophole. There was a stove pipe sticking up over the German parapet a foot or two, ordinary stove pipe. When Fritz fogged up the stove good to boil his kettle at meal time I used to slam a bullet through the pipe and Fritz would choke of the smoke right away. These sort of games went on for a couple of days until one day I had just fired two or three rounds from aforesaid favorite loop hole, got down to one side, a shade lower and was busy with the pull through cleaning my rifle –when–Crack-Snap -Crack- Snap-just like that. Two bullets came through the loophole and two came through the top of the breast’work right where my head would have been a minute before.
This was real shooting (by gum) and carried out by two real snipers working as a team. I began to watch for any well-aimed shots that came over and tried to dope out the spot they came from with the view to making a comeback that would count. We found out some months later that these snipers had all along been equipped with telescopic sights and powerful glasses for spotting us, and furthermore were organized into companies and relieved by sections in the line at regular periods. The relief coming in took over posts, information gathered and range cards of the ground on their front. The wonder is that we held our own so well and even at times got them cowed down so that some days there was scarcely a German bullet came over our lines.
Sniping was a deadly business the first two years of the war and the toll taken that way was heavy. There were a number of reasons for this. Communication trenches at that time were non-existent or at best in very poor repair and shallow. The men were comparatively new at the war game and took more foolish chances than necessary. They were often taking short cuts across open ground in daylight and in other ways exposing themselves. Three seconds exposure in daylight is time enough for a trained sniper to get in his shot. Then the new men were unnecessarily noisy when reliefs were on, careless about making smoke, showing movement and lights. All these things drew hostile fire and the sum total of loss from these causes over given periods was heavy.
This applied to both sides for there were few days that we did not have something to write into the sniping report that had to be sent in nightly. All shots were checked by an observer with a telescope that worked along side the sniper and verified hits and helped to locate targets.
Sergeant Knobel got busy as soon as we arrived on this front putting out night patrols between the opposing lines to gather information about the lay of the land, the enemy’s wire entanglements, position of their listening posts and activity of their moving patrols if any.
One night while up close to the German trench in a muddy flat piece of ground covered with Indian corn stumps or stubble our patrol must have been heard or dimly seen. Perhaps the sentries fancied they heard or saw something for they began to shoot up flare lights one after another and then started to sweep the ground with machine guns. We felt we could crawl into a rat hole if one was handy. The tearing ripping sweep of these guns would come roaring and snapping over us sometimes covering us with showers of wet mud, other times passing just over our backs to rip up the mud behind. There was a lad with us by the name of Johnston of fair complexion and medium height. He served on the Fire Department Team, at the Twin Cities at the head of the lakes before the war. A German flare light shot up in a high arc and came hissing down directly on top of him and they burn with a fierce white blinding light. Any movement on our part, even the slightest move while the light burned would have betrayed our position and sealed the fate of the whole patrol. He watched it come down coolly until it appeared certain to hit him on the legs. He spread-eagled his legs without another move until the light burned out and died between his feet. I suppose we were under this fire and shower of flares for upwards of five minutes though it seemed more like 45. Our teeth were loose in their sockets from setting them together and our nails nearly cut through the palms of our hands from gripping them. Not succeeding in their efforts to find us or failing to detect any signs of movement the Germans must have concluded there was nothing there for the flares and the m. g. fire ceased and we were able to make a safe get-away.
The lines were about 500 yards apart at this point and we had to cross a swamp creek fringed with polled willows before getting back to the vicinity of our own lines. Soon after crossing the creek we saw something moving back and forth in the vicinity of our own wire. Catching a glitter of light reflecting from something. We studied this and it turned out to be a lad from our battalion who had been sent out on listening post in front. Here he was with rifle at slope, bayonet fixed pacing up and down an improvised (tow path) as large as life. We sure had a good laugh at this exhibit. It was rare.
A. Currie was in command of the 2nd Brigade at that time and asked for a detailed map of the ground on our frontage. Sergeant Knobel ran a base line in daylight with a prismatic compass and tape among the old ruined houses and enclosures close behind our front. From this we worked forward and on into no-mans land traversing with luminous compass and tape at night. We had fixed the locations and got dimensions of all landmarks and physical features on the ground to be covered. What we could not get in this way was sketched in or located by intersection from three known points of observation in ruined houses. The position of these again was established by resection onto the original base line. We eventually turned in a map on a scale of 1 over 5000 (1/5000) and Currie got complimented for being well informed as to the ground on his part of the front line sector. This was supplemented by a series of panoramic sketches made by setting a telescope in a rest and sketching in all detail showing in its field of view. By swinging the scope the width of its field and repeating over a wide arc you could connect up with another arc sketched from the next O. P. to your flank. In this way we got a lot of detail of the German front lines that would not have otherwise been noted.
There was a patch of broad beans with high green stalks stretching from the German parapet outward toward our lines for some 75 yards. It looked like a place that might conceal a post for a m. g. a bombing post, or listening post at night. At any rate we needed it placed on our map, and I was sent out with compass and tape to locate and measure it. We worked across a creek with an old ladder used as a foot bridge,