S.O.S. Stand to!

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

CHAPTER PAGE

I. CAN'T KILL ME 1

II. THE FIRST NIGHT 17

III. YPRES 30

IV. MY HORSE SHOE WORKING 48

V. HUN HELPERS 58

VI. BITS OF BATTLE 87

VII. SANCTUARY WOODS 101

VIII. A BATH UNDER DIFFICULTIES 129

IX. HAM BONE DAVIS 143

X. BEES, HONEY AND HELL 157

XI. SCOTTY COMES BACK AT THE SOMME 170

XII. BEHEMOTH 185

XIII. THE FAMILY LUCK 203

XIV. THE DEAD SHELL 210

XV. SATAN'S SHELLS AND SCENTED GAS 235

XVI. BEFORE VIMY 262

XVII. VIMY 275

XVIII. BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY 284

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?"