The Emma Gees

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Transcriber's note:

Obvious printer's errors have been corrected.

The original spelling has been retained.

The illustrations' captions have been moved out of paragraphs, and their corresponding page numbers changed in the List of Illustrations.

THE EMMA GEES

by

HERBERT W. McBRIDE Captain, U. S. A. Late Twenty-first Canadian Battalion

Illustrated with Photographs and Trench Maps

[Illustration: Bouchard]

Indianapolis The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers Copyright 1918 The Bobbs-Merrill Company

Press of Braunworth & Co. Book Manufacturers Brooklyn, N. Y.

TO THE MEMORY OF

WILLIAM EMMANUEL BOUCHARD

Lance-Corporal Machine Gun Section Twenty-first Canadian Infantry Battalion

KILLED IN ACTION, AT COURCELLETTE SEPTEMBER 15TH 1916

In Flanders' fields the crosses stand-- Strange harvest for a fertile land! Where once the wheat and barley grew, With scarlet poppies running through. This year the poppies bloom to greet Not oats nor barley nor white wheat, But only crosses, row by row, Where stalwart reapers used to go. Harvest in Flanders--Louise Driscoll

INTRODUCTION

When the final history of this war is written, it is doubtful if any other name will so appeal to the Canadian as Ypres and the Ypres Salient; every foot of which is hallowed ground to French, Belgians, British and Colonials alike; not a yard of which has not been consecrated to the cause of human liberty and baptized in the blood of democracy.

Here the tattered remnants of that glorious "contemptible little army," in October, 1914, checked the first great onrush of the vandal hordes and saved the channel ports, the loss of which would have been far more serious than the capture of Paris and might, conceivably, have proved the decisive factor in bringing about a Prussian victory in the war.

Here the first Canadian troops to fight on the soil of Europe, the Princess Pat's, received their trial by fire and came through it with untarnished name, and here, also, the First Canadian Contingent withstood the terrible ordeal of poison gas in April, 1915, and, outnumbered four to one, with flank exposed and without any artillery support worthy of mention, hurled back, time after time, the flower of the Prussian army, and, in the words of the Commanding General of all the British troops: "saved the situation."

Here, too, as was fitting, we received our baptism of fire (Second Canadian Division), as did also the third when it came over.

For more than a year this salient was the home of the Canadian soldier and Langemarck, St. Julien, Hill 60, St. Eloi, Hooge, and a host of other names in this sector, have been emblazoned, in letters of fire, on his escutcheon.

Baffled in his attempts to capture the city of Ypres, the Hun began systematically to destroy it, turning his heaviest guns on the two most prominent structures: The Halles (Cloth Hall), and St. Martin's Cathedral, two of the grandest architectural monuments in Europe. Now there was no military significance in this; it was simply an exhibition of unbridled rage and savagery. With Rheims Cathedral, and hundreds of lesser churches and chateaux, these ruins will be perpetual monuments to the wanton ruthlessness of German kultur.