Brave Battalion (24 page)

After being briefed at 3
^rd
Brigade headquarters, Lt.-Col. Jack Leckie led his officers and non-commissioned officers to the top of Pozières Ridge for a look at the ground. To the east they could see the German lines. Leckie pointed out Kenora Trench, which from this distance “did not appear to be of any particular strength. It had an excellent field of fire, but there was little wire in front of it. The 16
^th
parties were confident that it could be captured with ease. The ground beyond was open country untouched by shell fire; the fields looked fresh and green. The towns of Pys and Miraumount in the distance seemed intact.” While Canadian Corps headquarters had received sound intelligence on Kenora's defensive strengths, this information was not passed down to divisional level. So Leckie and the other Can Scots could only draw conclusions on what they saw from the ridge.

Two days before the attack scheduled for September 26, Brig. George Tuxford told Leckie his battered battalion would play a minimal role—advancing one and a half companies behind the Royal Montreal Regiment to clean up any pockets of resistance it bypassed.
²³
While the two men talked, the supporting artillery began to thunder. Until the assault, the guns would fire continuously, drenching German positions with explosives intermixed with a generous dose of gas shells.

As night fell on September 25, No. 2 Company's senior surviving officer, Lt. Henry Duncan, led his men and half of No. 4 Company toward 14
^th
Battalion's lines. The Montreal battalion had sent a guide who quickly became disoriented. After several hours blundering about in the darkness, he brought the party unintentionally to the Courcelette's outskirts. German artillery suddenly began shelling them, and as the Can Scots moved warily into the ruins, a soldier ran toward them.

“What's all the rush, fellow?” called one of Duncan's sergeants.

“Wait, and you'll damn well soon see,” the man shouted over a shoulder as he sprinted out of the village. The sergeant advised Duncan they should get through Courcelette as quickly as possible and trotted forward. Duncan signalled for the others to match the pace and they “were hardly out of the village when a hurricane of five point nines swept into it, letting us know what we missed.” The guide remained disoriented, leading them on a wander into No Man's Land that ended only when he tripped upon a sap (an enemy-dug trench providing the Germans with a concealed approach to the Canadian lines) that led to the Royal Montreal Regiment's forward trenches. Dawn was breaking and Duncan figured it a miracle their sojourn in No Man's Land had not brought them into contact with any German patrols or drawn their fire.
²⁴

Zero Hour was set for 1235 hours, so Duncan and his men took up a position in a trench behind the Montrealers. All along the front, 3
^rd
Brigade's troops were packed tightly into jumping-off trenches so shallow they had to crouch. Just before the whistles sounded, officers signalled them to stand, straighten their gear, and fix bayonets. Suddenly bullets, like so many thousands of bees, buzzed overhead causing many of the men to reflexively crouch back down until they realized the fire was going outward. For the first time, Canadian gunners manning Vickers machine guns were firing their weapons indirectly in hopes of catching any reinforcements in the open before they could reach the forward trenches.
²⁵
A minute after the machine guns opened fire, eight hundred artillery pieces unleashed a barrage of shrapnel and explosive shells. Those shells were roaring overhead as the first wave surged forward. This was quickly followed by a second, and then the Canadian Scottish detachment headed into No Man's Land behind the Royal Montreal Regiment.
²⁶
Brigadier Tuxford thought the Royal Montreal Regiment and 48
^th
Highlanders putting in the attack were “moving well” and that the supporting “barrage [was] beautiful.”

Between the start line and Kenora, the Germans had constructed a 250-yard-long trench codenamed Sudbury, which angled to the east off Courcelette-Grandcourt road. This trench formed the boundary between the two 3
^rd
Brigade battalions, but neither bothered clearing it of enemy troops. That job fell to Duncan's Can Scots.

Approaching the trench they came upon “a gruesome spectacle.” Inexplicably the Germans had abandoned the trench in favour of lying out in the open on its front slope where they had been flayed by shrapnel. A long line of bodies dangling head down over the trench parapet indicated most had realized the error too late to return to its cover. The trench itself was clogged with others who had either succumbed to wounds or who were still dying. Forty to fifty surviving Germans offered a stiff fight until the Canadian Scottish killed them. Another forty had offered no resistance, waiting meekly to surrender.

Dead or alive Duncan, was surprised to see that all these troops were “of excellent physique” and wore new uniforms. The trench was well stocked with “soda water, small bottles of brandy, wine, and boxes of cigars.” Leaving the trench behind, Duncan led his men along a sunken road to clean out a series of dugouts. Rather than breaking into each dugout to engage the Germans with rifles and bayonets, Duncan's men instead threw phosphorous bombs—a “jam pot” bomb filled with phosphorus—inside. The bombs released a “white pungent vapour, sufficiently powerful to overcome any man still taking refuge underground.” Dugouts cleared, Duncan declared the mopping up over and returned his men to the cover afforded by Sudbury.
²⁷

The two assaulting battalions, meanwhile, had gotten separated when the 48
^th
Highlanders met heavy resistance from dugouts in No Man's Land. Speeding on alone, the Royal Montreal Regiment plunged into Kenora Trench, where most of the defenders opted to surrender rather than fight, and reported the objective secure at 1322 hours. They began sending large groups of prisoners back. Just as the Montrealers began to relax, however, the Germans struck back by counterattacking from both flanks and German artillery precisely targeted the trench. Casualties mounted alarmingly and, twice, the battalion was driven out of Kenora entirely. Each time it was regained in vicious hand-to-hand fighting.

It was mid-afternoon before the 48
^th
Highlanders advanced out of No Man's Land into a gap between Hessian and Kenora Trenches and dug in on the slope of Thiepval Ridge about 150 yards short of Regina Trench. On the left, 2
^nd
Canadian Infantry Brigade had gained its objectives on the ridge's summit but was fighting off repeated counterattacks. II British Corps had gained a toehold in Thiepval village and captured the western half of Zollern Graben Trench. But between its flank and that of Canadian Corps a gap had opened and the Germans still controlled most of Thiepval Ridge.

Lt.-Gen. Byng's intention for the morning was that his 2
^nd
Division would secure the German front northeast of Coucelette while 1
^st
Division seized Regina Trench. Tuxford, however, was worried that 3
^rd
Brigade's heavy casualties were such that even “to hold position taken, I may require considerable reinforcements.” The brigade's ability to reinforce the captured front with its own men was limited, the 48
^th
Highlanders reporting they had sent “all available men to hold this line” and desperately needed more troops from other units to help them hold on through the night. By nightfall, the 48
^th
had every man it could find up front and still counted only 150 troops stretched in a thin line that was unable to tie in with the Royal Montreal Regiment on its right. This battalion controlled a 200-yard stretch of Kenora Trench but was constantly engaged and also plagued by friendly artillery fire that kept chewing up one of its flanks. A fragmented signal to Tuxford reported that the Montrealers had “taken over German bombs and can use them.… Will hold position until further orders. Kindly send up reinforcements. Have fairly good trench, 2 M.Gs., very little ammunition. Great number of wounded between here and [Battalion Headquarters].” A following message sent at 1840 reported thirty percent casualties, but morale remaining good. Again, reinforcements were urgently requested—as “we now have every available man in the line.”
²⁸

All Tuxford could do was to send some piecemeal sections of the Canadian Scottish forward. No. 3 Company under Major John Hall was assigned to the 14
^th
Battalion while the 15
^th
Battalion would be reinforced by Major Sydney Goodall's No. 1 Company. Both units reached the front by 2100 hours. All his fighting troops now attached to other battalions, Lt.-Col. Leckie sent his unneeded headquarters staff to the rear and joined the brigade's forward headquarters to monitor events.
²⁹

When No. 3 Company arrived, it was met by Lt.-Col. R. P. Clark who told Hall to send two platoons—Nos. 11 and 12—under his only remaining officer, Lt. Gordon Tupper, to reinforce the Royal Montreal Regiment's No. 3 Company at Kenora Trench. As Tupper headed toward Kenora, Clark further ordered Hall to send No. 9 Platoon under CSM George Palmer to a strongpoint just back of Kenora, while Hall and No. 10 Platoon remained in reserve at battalion headquarters.
³⁰

Having lost two-thirds of its strength and all its officers other than Lt. W. J. Holliday, 14
^th
Battalion's No. 3 Company had by this time withdrawn with all its wounded from Kenora Trench and taken cover in Sudbury.
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Unaware of this development, Tupper and his men were still headed for Kenora Trench—following a 14
^th
Battalion guide who led them astray and almost into the midst of a heavily manned German trench. Spotting the silhouettes of German coal-scuttle helmets, Tupper hurriedly turned his men about and beat a hasty retreat just as the enemy opened fire. Only a few men in the two platoons were hit, but No. 11 Platoon's sergeant, George Slessor, ended up alone and lost in No Man's Land. He eventually stumbled into an unoccupied section of Kenora Trench and took refuge there. He would be found the next morning, “sound asleep, with his head pillowed on a dead German.”
³²

Finally the guide came upon Holliday's men in Sudbury Trench. Heartened by the reinforcements, Holliday mustered the seventeen men in his company still capable of fighting and charged back to Kenora Trench. The Germans had managed to get only a few men in place there and these were quickly driven off with about six being taken prisoner. Tupper then brought his men forward and the small force “consolidated as far as practicable.”
³³
Shortly thereafter, CSM Palmer, having failed to find the reported strongpoint that had been his objective, led No. 9 Platoon into Kenora to bolster the number of its defenders.

At dawn the Germans saturated Kenora Trench with shellfire, inflicting many casualties. But repeated counterattacks were thrown back. Slowly the number of defenders dwindled as the day wore on. In the late afternoon, Tupper and Holliday “decided that it would be wise to vacate this isolated position.” They fell back to Sudbury Trench and then reported their action to battalion headquarters.

Lt.-Col. Clark's signal to Tuxford that Kenora Trench had been abandoned arrived at the same time that the division—pressured by corps—issued instructions intended to secure both Kenora and Regina Trenches. Once again 3
^rd
Brigade's 15
^th
and 14
^th
battalions were to seize Kenora, while 2
^nd
Brigade's 5
^th
and 8
^th
Battalions would go for Regina.
³⁴
Tuxford went forward to personally assess 14
^th
Battalion's condition. Including the Canadian Scottish from No. 3 Company under Major Hall, he counted just seventy-five men capable of going into action. How that number of men could succeed he had no idea but, as ordered, he sent the brigade forward at 0200 hours on September 28. They moved out into the muddy battlefield under heavy rain but the cover this offered was quickly lost as illumination flares pinned the Canadians in the open. In thirty minutes, the attack was shredded by German fire. The Royal Montreal Regiment calculated its losses since the beginning of the offensive at 10 officers and 360 other ranks.
³⁵
In this last action Hall's casualties were not recorded, but they included ten men from one section led by Sgt. Ivor Burgess. The twenty-four-year-old sergeant from Winnipeg was among the men killed.
³⁶

Late on September 28, what was left of 1
^st
Division was relieved by brigades of 2
^nd
Division and the Battle of Thiepval Ridge closed. Field Marshal Haig admitted it had largely been a failure. The ridge's now blood-soaked northwestern flank remained in German hands and Regina Trench seemed impregnable.