S.O.S. Stand to!

Reginald Grant

Informations

• Publié par: oslu
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 31
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Project Gutenberg EBook of S.O.S. Stand to!, by Reginald Grant This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: S.O.S. Stand to! Author: Reginald Grant Release Date: May 1, 2006 [EBook #18292] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK S.O.S. STAND TO! *** Produced by Geetu Melwani, Graeme Mackreth, David Clarke and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) S.O.S. STAND TO! Patching up the "Pipped" S.O.S. STAND TO! BY SERGEANT REGINALD GRANT 1ST FIELD ARTILLERY BRIGADE, 1ST CANADIAN DIVISION ILLUSTRATED D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1918 COPYRIGHT , 1918, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Printed in the United States of America DEDICATION IN HUMBLE, REVERENT SPIRIT I DEDICATE THESE PAGES TO THE MEMORY OF THE LADS WHO SERVED WITH ME IN THE "SACRIFICE BATTERY," AND WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES THAT THOSE BEHIND MIGHT LIVE, AND, ALSO, IN BROTHERLY AFFECTION AND ESTEEM TO MY BROTHERS, GORDON AND BILLY, WHO ARE STILL FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT AND KEEPING THE FAITH. REMARK PREFATORY The general purpose and scope of the rehearsal of my three years' personal experience while in the artillery arm of the First Division of Canada's overseas forces is to lay before the reader an outline of the movement of our Division as it may be gathered from the performance of my own specific duties, with especial reference to the battles of Ypres (the 2nd), Givenchy, Sanctuary Woods (Ypres 3rd), the Somme and Vimy Ridge. Very little attention or space has been devoted to the detail of initiatory camp life, drill, rations and the like; even had I the space to do so, those features have been liberally covered by a number of earlier writers; besides, I am of the opinion that the average reader is more concerned with the desire to be imaginably transported as nearly as possible to the heart of the struggle,—to live in his own mind the strain and turmoil of the individual soldier in the desperate conflict which now rages, the decision of which will determine whether democracy or military autocracy shall be the predominating factor in the governments of the peoples of the earth. INTRODUCTORY The devastating rush of the gray-clad hordes of Huns into the peace-loving lands of Belgium and France has demonstrated conclusively that to win this or any other war the one thing necessary is superiority in artillery. Without this, an enemy sufficiently strong in numbers and other equipment, can drive ahead, overcoming and crushing all obstacles. The average lay reader is too apt to lose sight of the supreme importance of this arm of the service, to which all other movements are subsidiary; the dash of the charge by the infantry over the top, magnificent in its appeal, submerges to a degree the real factor upon which success or failure of the charge depends, i.e., the blazing of the trail by the guns. Little thought is devoted to the man who, with hell bursting on and around him, has to get his shell home in a certain number of seconds so that the charge can be made. Neither is it generally known that the percentage of loss in units is greater in the unit known as the sacrifice battery than in any other branch of the fighting machine. Therefore, I may be pardoned if I feel a certain human pride in the fact that it was my honorable lot to serve in this unit nearly a score of times during my work over there, and I can account for my failure to be seriously injured (a dislocation or a little gassing is comparatively trivial) to nothing other than, as my Major emphatically expressed it, "Damned horseshoe luck!" CONTENTS I. C AN'T KILL ME II. THE FIRST N IGHT III. YPRES IV. MY H ORSE SHOE WORKING V. H UN H ELPERS VI. BITS OF BATTLE VII. SANCTUARY WOODS VIII. A BATH U NDER D IFFICULTIES IX. H AM BONE D AVIS X. BEES, H ONEY AND H ELL XI. SCOTTY C OMES BACK AT THE SOMME XII. BEHEMOTH XIII. THE FAMILY LUCK XIV. THE D EAD SHELL XV. SATAN'S SHELLS AND SCENTED GAS XVI. BEFORE VIMY XVII. VIMY XVIII. BACK TO GOD'S C OUNTRY S.O.S. STAND TO! CHAPTER I CAN'T KILL ME "Hello, Central, give me Queen 4000. Is that you, Burt? You are going, aren't you?" Burt Young was one of my pals and I had just learned from the morning paper that enlistments for Canada's first overseas contingent were being taken that day and I had called up to inquire if he were going. "Sure, I am going. Where will I meet you?" We arranged to meet at the exhibition ground and, taking French leave of the office, I hastened to the camp where the recruiting was going on, picking up Burt on the way. It was as if a baseball championship series were on; the crowd good-naturedly swayed and jammed as each man struggled to get to the door and signed up before the quota was full. With only the loss of a hat and some slight disarrangement of my collar and tie, I was one of the lucky ones. And we were lucky! Although visions of lands to be seen and adventures to be had flitted rapidly through my mind, and although I believe none of us on that day dreamed of what we were getting into, yet, looking back over it all, I would not have missed my place in Canada's First Division for anything I ever hope to have on earth. In two hours I was in khaki and in another hour I had bade the folks farewell and was standing on the station platform waiting for the train that would take us to Valcartier, the greatest gathering place of soldiers that Canada has ever known. Some idea of my knowledge of things military may be gleaned from the following:—chatting with Burt, he suddenly espied a large car, with two girls, shooting up the street to the station, and called my attention to it. One of the girls was my sister. I immediately scented trouble. I skipped across to the other side of the depot, intending to board the train from the other side when it came in; I was not going to have my soldiering interfered with if I could help it. Standing in the shelter of a pillar, I did not notice two husky recruits in khaki behind me. "Is your name Grant?" they asked. "Yes." "The Colonel wants to see you at once," they informed me, and they marched me back. As I approached, my sister was talking earnestly and energetically to the Colonel and I could plainly see I was the object of the conversation. I waited. "How is this, Grant, this lady says you are not of age. Is that so?" asked the Colonel. "I am of age and—" "Stand to attention!" snapped the Colonel. I straightened up and folded my arms respectfully across my chest. "Stand to attention, damn you! Don't you know how to stand to attention?" I shifted my feet a little uneasily, wondering how he wanted me to stand. "Put those heels together," he snorted. I did so. "Keep your toes apart," he half hissed and half shouted. I spread my toes apart. I still had my arms folded. Almost purple in the face with his violence, he roared, "Put those damned hands of yours down!" and he grabbed my wrists and flopped them down. "Young lady, you'll have to take this matter up at Valcartier; there is no time to do anything now. You can go," this to me. I turned on my heel. "Here," he roared. "Don't you know enough to salute your superior officer? Salute!" I gingerly raised my hand to my forehead and held it there, much after the fashion, I think, of a man shading his eyes from the sun, or a nautical chap gazing intently seaward. "You idiot!" he bellowed, as he grabbed my hand and fiercely flung it down. "Don't you know how to salute? Here, do this"—and he saluted. I followed as well as I was able, but the utter disgust that was plastered all over his visage as he turned on his heel would not have left much hope for soldierly qualifications in one any less hopeful and enthusiastic than I was. My sister, in spite of her tears, could not keep back the smile as I again kissed her good-by. It was about noon next day when I reached Valcartier and after a month of solid work, the like of which I had never before experienced, I was as hard as a nail, and as tough, as indeed was every man in that honor division of Canada's expeditionary forces. We received orders to leave for England on the 14th day of September, 1914. I was detailed on a gun limber of my subsection of the First Battery, the artillery being the arm of the service to which I was assigned. Starting about 4:30 in the afternoon, in torrents of rain, we headed for the city of Quebec. Along the way the people had thoughtfully built large bonfires on either side of the road, serving the double purpose of lighting our way during the night and enabling us to jump off and warm ourselves, as we were thoroughly chilled. The road was in a horribly bad condition and the rain did not improve it any, and while the limber was lurching from side to side, like a ship staggering in a storm, it was the better part of wisdom for me to keep my eyes open to save myself from being thrown off and having my precious neck broken. To prevent in some measure the rain trickling down my neck, I took a rubber sheet, used to cover the horses, tied the two corners together, making a sort of cape of it, and put it round my neck. Then I settled myself down to hold on to the limber and think at the same time of the great game of which I had become an infinitesimal part. I was sitting on the right hand side of the limber close to the wheel and, before long, the effort to think and hold on at the same time was too much for me, and I fell into a fairly sound sleep, Sergeant Johnson, my companion, doing likewise. While dozing, the string from the end of the cape engaged itself with the axle, wound itself round and round and started pulling me down. When I awoke it had a grip on me and every