Читать книгу Three to a Loaf - Michael J. Goodspeed - Страница 8

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ALTHOUGH MY LATTER YEARS of military service was radically different from that of my peers, my introduction to army life was much the same as it was for tens of thousands of others.

As a potential officer, I was given quarters similar to those of men whom I was one day to lead. However, I was treated differently in several respects from the other ranks who did their initial training at Valcartier. I didn’t question these dissimilarities at the time. Our disparate military circumstances were really nothing more than the accepted values of our time. And although there were a few young officers who assumed they were intrinsically better than the men we were to lead, there were infinitely more of us who were conscious of the awful responsibilities we were to assume.

As potential junior officers, we were guided largely by attitudes rooted in the army of Queen Victoria’s day, where leaders were expected to be culled from a different stratum of society and soldiers were seen as being entirely different. Viewed from five and a half decades later, this certainly seems like a preposterous notion, but it was one most of us unconsciously accepted. I was soon to witness how these beliefs, once thought to be fundamental to our society, were to be violently burned out of our way of thinking. Nevertheless, it was the accepted wisdom of my time, and despite its shortcomings, I still believe that those officers who led our troops in the field were first-rate men who served courageously and honourably. They certainly died gallantly – and for officers in the trenches that was the single trait the system demanded from them above all else.

For my first week, I lived in a rough wooden shack with a pot-bellied coal stove to heat it. We were later moved to bell tents, with two probationary second lieutenants in each. This in itself was significantly more comfortable than the men, as they lived eight to a bell tent. Another comfort allowed us was that even as officers under training we were assigned a batman to look after our kit. In Canada, we were much better fed than the soldiers. We dined on table cloths, ate from hotel tableware, and our mess was richly provided for. Our diet was more akin to that found in a good railway hotel, while soldiers ate a more monotonous routine of bread, jam, meat stews, and tea.

Our comforts aside, our commanding officer was determined to see that we knew our jobs, and we worked longer hours than the men we would eventually command. Our instruction was seldom inspired, and in many ways, even at the time, I thought it reflected the inadequacies of the peacetime militia. While in Canada, I learned nothing about trench warfare, the employment or handling of machine-guns, or how to direct artillery fire. Instead, we learned care of arms. We spent long days on the rifle range trying vainly to reach the regular soldiers’ standards of marksmanship. We spent endless hours on parade square drill. And we studied and took part in exercises on minor tactics, physical training, military law, bayonet fighting, judging distance, report writing, map and compass use, and how to organize and site sentries. Much of what I learned in Valcartier was useful, but much of it was useless.

As a civilian coming to the army, I was surprised to find that junior officers were not entirely encouraged to think for themselves but were instead expected to display initiative only within the confines of a narrowly restricted and largely unwritten doctrine. Perhaps these shortcomings were more evident in hindsight. Like so many of us who endured the war, I’ve frequently wondered if the course of our lives was guided by extraordinarily stupid politicians and generals, or if it was a case of technology making stalemate and mass slaughter inevitable.

Whatever the truth, I still believe the mental straitjacket imposed on our peacetime militia caused us needless death and suffering, and the fact that larger European armies made similar blunders in no way vindicates our own leaders. The Canadians and, as I was to find out from bitter first-hand experience, the Germans were to rid themselves of much of this smugness as the war progressed. My generation of soldiers paid dearly for the sleepy complacency of our politicians and generals. As a veteran who lived in the mud and watched so many of my fellow soldiers crucified, I have long been troubled by the fact that none of those responsible for the manner in which that tragedy unfolded has ever been called to account for such deeply rooted neglect and stupidity.

My Canadian instructors were for the most part decent older men from across the country. They were men who had militia service and had volunteered for active duty, but against their wishes were placed in training positions. None of them had ever been to war; and for many, the militia had been a comfortable and highly sociable means of performing a civic duty. None of them had expected the kind of slaughter that was going on in France.

My fellow officers were men not unlike me – although few came from as comfortable a background as I did. Most were reasonably well-educated city men, the sons of doctors, clergymen, lawyers, and merchants who had joined out of a sense of obligation. Most were quite intelligent, fit, good natured and resourceful young men. I’ve often wondered who amongst us survived. I was the only one going to the Princess Patricia’s and except for one or two stray acquaintances during the war, I never saw most of them again.

I never did get a chance to see my family again before we went overseas. From Valcartier we took the train down to Quebec City and boarded the Star of India. Our ship was a rusting steam-liner that had not long before been employed on more elegant duties. Before being converted to a troop ship, the old Star of India ran genteel passengers in first class and a lucrative trade in second class and steerage conveying immigrants from Southampton to New York. She ended her days in late 1917, a day out from the coast of Ireland, when a U-boat torpedoed her.

We didn’t see any submarines; but for the first time in my life I saw whales. I was taken by their majesty and their sense of serenity. Early one morning when I was standing on deck, just after a torpedo drill, a very large blue whale surfaced alongside us. It blew a great geyser of water, flapped its enormous tail several times, and rolled cheerfully back into the depths. All of us on deck were thrilled and the men cheered spontaneously.

The only other occurrence of note had to do with our fellow passengers, a company of nursing sisters headed for duty in field hospitals. After my training in Valcartier, the sight and proximity of these lovely creatures was a real reminder of the new life I had volunteered for. Life in the army was much different from civilian life for many reasons, not the least of them was that it was an entirely masculine culture. I managed to chat briefly with some of the nurses before we landed in England, but for the most part we just exchanged smiles and nods.

The day we saw the whales I managed to engage two of the nurses in conversation at the ship’s rail. Long after the whales went their own way, we stared out into a steadily rolling grey nothingness. One of the sisters was a woman in her late twenties from Toronto and the other, whose name was Hannah, was closer to my age. She was a petite honey-blonde from Vancouver and she laughed easily. We chatted for almost an hour about so many things, none of which was of any importance and after these years I don’t remember any of it anyway; but I do remember the delight I took in her company. Years later, I began to think what a strange thing war was, for apart from its violence, it put us into situations that were completely different from the natural way of things. The ship was very crowded and although I kept my eyes peeled throughout the rest of the voyage I didn’t run into Hannah again, but I enjoyed her brief company immensely. On the last day out there was much guffawing and ribald comments one morning when, as part of the normal ship’s bulletins, the officer in charge of the trooping announced over the tannoy that the matron had complained of instances of “unseemly conduct and anyone caught embracing a nurse would be charged.”

Our arrival in England was something of an anti-climax. We’d all read about the delirious reception given to the Canadian troops when the First Division embarked in England. The papers were full of patriotic nonsense about how the locals were saying it was the largest embarkation of foreign troops since William the Conqueror. As a routine reinforcement troop ship, we docked with no fanfare and came ashore quietly one evening. On the quayside, we were given tea and scones by the Salvation Army. We waited for an hour for our personal kit, and a short time later we found ourselves on a troop train to Salisbury Plain. Our embarkation was a well-organized operation and proceeded with a mechanical efficiency that I found impressive. While the residents of Southampton slept in their beds, we slipped unseen through the countryside to our next stop on our journey to the trenches in France.

England was a much more intense repetition of what we had already gone through in Canada. I was put into an officer replacement training company. Our instructors, both officers and noncommissioned officers, were almost all British. Except for the sergeant major, who was a greying and leather-faced veteran of the Indian army, the instructors we saw the most were sergeants and corporals from the old regular British army. Most of them had received wounds of varying degrees of severity in the earliest days of the war. These NCOs had a cheerful cockiness about them and treated us firmly, but with a kindly good nature.

Our affection for the NCOs of the old army didn’t extend to our bayonet-training instructors, who were recently recruited bullies whose mission was to put “fighting spirit” into us. They were all younger, more athletic men, who worked us to exhaustion; and had never been to the front themselves. They took immense pleasure from their graphic descriptions of how to skewer the enemy on the end of a bayonet. Being of German blood – a fact I took pains to conceal – I had more reason than most to loathe these posturing men in their safe jobs.

The few British officers I met at the time were on the whole distant, and they exuded a sense of disdain for their colonial counterparts. It was hard to warm to them, and except for our company officer, a quiet and devout Captain Wallace from the Royal Scots, I never really got to know any British officers prior to arriving at the battalion so I was at a loss to form any kind of useful opinion of them. Wallace was a precise, if unimaginative man with a salt-and-pepper moustache. He had taken a bullet through the knee in October of 1914.

While I was in England, the British army ensured that we received instruction in those subjects that had been quietly glossed over in Canada. I learned how to site and maintain the Vickers and Colt machine-guns, how to remedy their stoppages, and how to clean them in the dark. Because they were still in short supply, we also received a half-day’s instruction on the Lewis gun, which was eventually to become our new light machine-gun. The Lewis gun looked like a wonderful weapon – except for the fact that the gunner had to expose himself by climbing on top of it to reload it.

Much to my relief, we studied the developing science of trench warfare. In a wooden hut we were tutored on the design of a battalion’s defensive layout using a carefully crafted plaster model. I never saw anything quite as elaborate or as flawlessly designed as our model – but the wire entanglements on the model proved to be child’s play in comparison to the murderous belts of wire we were to encounter on sections of the front.

One cold rainy night we spent a frustrating thirteen hours pick-axing our way three feet deep into the chalky Salisbury soil. Captain Wallace half-seriously called us “a pack of lazy dogs” for not completing the trench in our allotted time, but once the captain was out of earshot Sergeant Halstead, pretending he hadn’t heard a thing, quietly told us that we’d done reasonably well. Most courses only got a foot down into the rocky soil in that area.

“Remember, gentlemen,” he said, “if you are ever planning an operation, you and your men will dig a little faster when someone is shooting at you, but don’t expect miracles.”

Halstead was a grey-haired Cockney who had spent half his life in distant parts of the Empire. He had a large measure of common sense and I often thought he would have been far more effective commanding a brigade than supervising entrenching demonstrations on Salisbury Plain.

I spent the better part of a day in London on the single day’s leave we were given before moving to France. Most of my fellow officers had never seen the city before and we spent most of our time dashing in and out of pubs and sitting on the top of a double-decked omnibus driving about the city viewing the sites. Normally I loved London, but in wartime she looked grey and dismal. Everything was overpriced and I found it a bit disconcerting when the shopkeepers repeatedly asked us, “Ah, Canadian lads, eh? Looking forward to getting over there to have a go at the Hun?” I don’t think any of us were wildly enthusiastic about the prospect of battle. We were prepared to go, but deep inside we all wanted it to be safely over. Even then, we would happily have foregone the adventure ahead of us.

After a further two days of training, we were assembled on the edge of the parade square in the pre-dawn darkness under the light of a single weak electric street lamp. There was a steady, cold drizzle of rain and we were informed we were to get our kit ready, for that evening we would be entraining for Portsmouth to catch the night’s ferry to Le Havre.

Captain Wallace, leaning heavily on his cane, gave an encouraging and fatherly speech. “You should remember what you’ve been taught. Make examples of yourselves to the men and make all your decisions as if the shoe was on the other foot. Guide yourself by whatever you would expect as fair treatment from your platoon officer if you were a soldier. Do that and you won’t go too far wrong.” He assured us we would do splendidly and make our regiments, Canada, and the Empire proud. He sincerely bid us “Good luck and God bless,” saluted us, and limped off the parade square.

The train to Portsmouth was late, overcrowded, and reeked of urine and filth. We sat on our kit crammed three to a bench in what had been designated an officers’ car. We disembarked in a steady downpour amongst a throng of military police barking directions and indicating our way forward with electric torches. “Canadian officers to the right, Third Division Other Rank reinforcements to the left. Look lively please, gentlemen. Move along now.”

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.