And We Go On by Will R. Bird Page A

Tommy, and Jasper, and Arthur and myself.
    The major reddened furiously, he glared, then grinned, and looked severe again, and finally sentenced us to dig a much-needed latrine near our billets, and to do it after the usual parades. When the time came, a burly police escorted us to the garden of a French miner, and ordered us to go to work. In a short time the owner of the place appeared, and asked, in French, what we were doing. Arthur could speak French like a native, and he explained that we were going to plant some doubtful bombs there. They might explode and they might not, but it was not safe to have them in our billets. The Frenchman went wild. He rushed at us and tore the shovels from our hands and he almost clubbed our gallant escort, who finally bade us to stand by for further orders. We went back to our billets and, very strangely, were never recalled.
    The 42nd had a fine football team and it defeated the R.C.R.’s, then the 49th, and we were marched to Marle les Mines to watch them play. They won the divisional championship and were presented with a silver bugle. Sir Robert Borden came and reviewed us, then General Lipsett and finally General Byng. All the old hands said that we were in for a bloody slaughter, after so many inspections, but we did not believe them – we had grown accustomed to “cook house” rumours. We knew, nevertheless, that we were to participate in a big battle, for we were training daily over tapes that represented the German trench system on the Ridge.
    We had got to know Divion fairly well, and knew where to purchase eggs and chips and, occasionally, French bread. The rations were better than they had been in the line and we began to feel more like living. I often went to the kitchen of my billet to write letters or jot notes in my diary, and soon discovered that madame and her family were not the least disturbed by my presence. Mickey was with me one cold Saturday evening when the two bony daughters of the household calmly bathed beside the stove, and then the father came home and madame scrubbed from him the grime of the coal mines.
    I had had just fatigue enough one day to clear me from parade and was going back to my billet when I met a man who, I often thought, came nearest of any to guessing my state of mind. He was Sergeant Cave of the scouts, a tall, shrewd-eyed man who knew his business. He was going thento arrange targets to shoot at and asked me if I cared to go along. I went, and found that the targets were simply tin cans stuck on a hillside, but I surprised the sergeant. In Canada I had made good scores with the Ross rifle, and I could shoot much better than the average soldier. My father, an officer of the old 93rd Regiment, had been an expert marksman.
    We shot, five of his snipers and myself, at tin ends on the bank, a small target. In ten times I never missed, and then I punctured one at one hundred and fifty yards. The sergeant was excited and asked my name and my platoon. I talked with him a time and then went back to Tommy and the boys.
    The battalion moved to Dumbell Camp, a miserable swamp in a wood near Villers Au Bois. We bagged slimy mud and made shelters, walls three feet high covered with corrugated iron, or rubber sheets, or anything we could salvage, and camouflaged the whole with branches. It rained and was very cold and the rations were very scarce. Never in France was I as hungry as then, and I would have eaten anything in the food line I could find in the muck.
    From that mess we were rushed to the front line. The Germans had blown a mine north and adjoining Durrand Crater, and a party of them had been repulsed by our “A” Company which was in the line. Thirty yards of front line had been destroyed and it was important that a new trench be made, with saps leading to new posts. The Germans shelled the Quarry line and all the back area as we marched in, and the mud made the going hard. In addition, we had not had enough to eat and