Thirty Canadian V. Cs., 23d April 1915 to 30th March 1918.
by Theodore Goodridge Roberts and Robin Richards and Stuart Martin.
THIRTY CANADIAN V.Cs.
EDITOR"S NOTE.--These narratives are the work of three members of the Canadian War Records Office--Captain Theodore Goodridge Roberts, New Brunswick Regiment, late H. Q. Canadian Army Corps, B.E.F.; Private Robin Richards, late the Princess Patricia"s Canadian Light Infantry, B.E.F., and Private Stuart Martin, late No. 5 Canadian General Hospital, Salonika.
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LANCE-CORPORAL FREDERICK FISHER, 13TH BATTALION
In March, 1915, Canadian guns took part in the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, and a Canadian regiment, the Princess Patricia"s Light Infantry, fought well at St. Eloi; but it was not until April that the infantry of the 1st Canadian Division came to grips with the enemy.
The Canadian Division moved into the Ypres Salient about a week before the Germans commenced their terrific and wanton bombardment of the unfortunate city of Ypres. They relieved troops of the 11th Division of the French Army in five thousand yards of undeveloped trenches.
Fisher, a lance-corporal of the 13th Canadian Infantry Battalion, performed the deed of valour (at the cost of his life) for which he was granted the Victoria Cross, on the 23rd of April, 1915. He was our first V.C., in this war, by one day.
On the afternoon of the 22nd of April the Germans projected their first attack of asphyxiating gas against a point of our Allies" front. Turcos and Zouaves fell back, strangled, blinded and dismayed. The British left was exposed. A four-mile gap--a way to Calais--lay open to the enemy.
The 1st Canadian Division, the only Canadian Division in the field in those early days, held the British left. It blocked the four-mile gap and held up Germany, gas and all.
There were no such things as gas masks in those days; but the Canadians were undismayed by that new and terrific form of murder. They had left their offices and shops, their schools and farms and mills, with the intention of fighting the Hun, and, in return, of suffering the worst he could do to them. They did not expect him to fight like a sportsman, or even like a human being. So they accepted the gas as part of the day"s work. It was the last day"s work for hundreds of those good workmen.
A battery of Canadian 18-pounders, commanded by Major W. B. M. King, C.F.A., maintained its original position well into the second day of the battle--the 23rd of April. The gunners were supported by a depleted Company of the 14th (Royal Montreal) Battalion, and kept up their fire on the approaching Germans until their final rounds were crashed into "the brown" of the ma.s.sed enemy at a range of less than two hundred yards.
This is a cla.s.s of performance which seems to make a particular appeal to the hearts of gunners. It calls for more than steadiness and desperate courage, for technical difficulties in the matter of timing the fuses to a fraction of a second must be overcome under conditions peculiarly adverse to the making of exact mathematical calculations. But this sort of thing is frequently done--always with gusto and sometimes with the loss of the guns and the lives of their crews. The gunner then feels all the primitive excitement of the infantryman in a bayonet charge. He claps his gun, that complicated, high-priced and prodigious weapon, at the very head of the enemy, as if it were no more than a pistol.
On this occasion the guns were not lost. They were extricated from beneath the very boots and bayonets of the enemy and withdrawn to open fire again from a more secure position and at a more customary range.
They were "man-handled" out and back by the survivors of their own crews and of the supporting company of infantry; but all those heroic and herculean efforts would have availed nothing if Corporal Fisher had not played his part.
Fisher was in command of a machine-gun and four men of his battalion--the 13th. He saw and understood the situation of Major King"s battery and instantly hastened to the rescue. He set up his gun in an exposed position and opened fire on the advancing Germans, choosing for his target the point of the attack which most immediately menaced the battery of field-guns. His four men were put out of action. They were replaced, as they fell, by men of the 14th, who were toiling near-by at the stubborn guns. Fisher and his Colt remained unhit. The pressure of his finger did not relax from the trigger, nor did his eyes waver from the sights. Eager hands pa.s.sed along the belts of ammunition and fed them into the devouring breech. So the good work was continued. The front of the attack was sprayed and ripped by bullets. Thus it was held until the 18-pounders were dragged back to safety.
Not satisfied with this piece of invaluable work, Fisher advanced again, took up a yet more exposed position, and, under the combined enemy fire of shrapnel, H.E., machine-guns and rifles, continued to check and slay the Germans. The men who went up with him from his former firing position fell, one by one, crawled away or lay still in death. But the Lance-Corporal continued to fire. The pressure of his finger did not relax from the trigger until he was shot dead.
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SERGEANT-MAJOR F. W. HALL, 8TH BATTALION
In the lesser wars of the past the Victoria Cross was more frequently awarded for demonstrations of valour in connection with the rescuing of wounded under fire than for courageous acts designed and carried out with more material and purely military advantages in view. To risk one"s life, perhaps to lose it, in a successful or vain attempt to save the life of a disabled comrade was--granting favourable circ.u.mstances and conditions--to be recommended for that crowning award. When we consider the nature of those lesser wars we appreciate the admirable spirit in which those recommendations were made. Those were days of small armies, long marches and short battles. The fate of the Empire, say even of the world"s freedom, never hung upon the turn of any one engagement. A soldier was something more romantic then than a unit of man-power.
The length, the unrelieved ferocity and the stupendous proportions of this war, have somewhat altered the spirit in which recommendations for awards are made. The deed of valour must show material rather than sentimental results; the duty that inspires the deed must show a military rather than a humane intention. The spirit of our heroes is the same to-day as it was yesterday, whether the courageous act results in the holding of a position, the killing of a score of Germans, or the saving of one comrade"s life. Only the spirit of official appreciation has changed; but this new spirit is logical.
F. W. Hall was recommended for his Cross in the old spirit.
The deed of valour for which Company-Sergeant-Major Hall, of the 8th Canadian Infantry Battalion, was awarded the Victoria Cross was performed on the morning of the day following the great achievement and death of Lance-Corporal Fisher. Hall, too, lost his life in the very act of self-sacrifice by which he won immortality.
During the night of April 23rd the 8th Battalion, of our 2nd Infantry Brigade, relieved the 15th Battalion, of the 3rd Brigade, in a section of our front line. In moving up to our fire-trench the relieving troops had to cross a high bank which was fully exposed to the rifle and machine-gun fire of the enemy in the positions opposite. This bank lay about fifteen yards in rear of our forward position at this point. Its crest was continuously swept by bullets while the relief was taking place and the incoming battalion suffered a number of casualties. In the darkness and the confusion of taking over a new trench under such adverse conditions, the exact extent of the casualties was not immediately known; but Sergeant-Major Hall missed a member of his company on two separate occasions and on two separate occasions left the trench and went back to the top of the bank, under cover of the dark, returning each time with a wounded man.
At nine o"clock in the morning of the 24th, the attention of the occupants of the trench was attracted to the top of the bank by groans of suffering. Hall immediately suggested a rescue, in spite of the fact that it was now high daylight, and Corporal Payne and Private Rogerson as promptly volunteered to accompany him. The three went over the parados, with their backs to the enemy, and instantly drew a heavy fire.
Before they could reach the sufferer, who lay somewhere just beyond their view on the top of the bank, both Payne and Rogerson were wounded.
They crawled and scrambled back to the shelter of the trench, with Hall"s a.s.sistance. There the Sergeant-Major rested for a few minutes, before attempting the rescue again. He refused to be accompanied the second time, knowing that as soon as he left the trench he would become the target for the excellent shooting that had already put Payne and Rogerson out of action. It was his duty as a non-commissioned officer to avoid making the same mistake twice. He had already permitted the risking of three lives in the attempt to save one life and had suffered two casualties; but doubtless he felt free to risk his own life again in the same adventure as he had already successfully accomplished two rescues over the same ground. He may be forgiven, I think, for not pausing to reflect that his own life was of more value to the cause than the life of the sufferer lying out behind the trench.
The fire from the hostile positions in front and on the flanks of this point in our line was now hot and accurate. It was deliberate, aimed fire, discharged in broad daylight over adjusted sights at an expected target. Hall knew all this; but he crawled out of the trench. He moved slowly, squirming along very close to the ground. The bullets whispered past him and over him, cut the earth around him, pinged and thudded upon the face of the bank before him. Very low shots, ricocheting off the top of the parados in his rear, whined and hummed in erratic flight. He reached and crawled up the slope of the bank without being hit. He quickly located and joined the wounded man, guided straight by the weakening groans of suffering. He lay flat and squirmed himself beneath the other"s helpless body. Thus he got the sufferer on his back, in position to be moved; but in the act of raising his head slightly to glance over the way by which he must regain the shelter of the trench, he received a bullet in the brain. Other bullets immediately put an end to the sufferings of the man on his back.
Hall had been born in Belfast, Ireland, but Winnipeg was his Canadian home.
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CAPTAIN FRANCIS ALEXANDER CARON SCRIMGER, C.A.M.C.
During the terrible days from April 22nd till April 25th, 1915, the Canadian troops had their mettle tested to a supreme degree. In those four days the second battle of Ypres was fought and the German drive held up where its authors had thought it irresistible. Even the deluge of gas--the first used in the war--gained them less benefit than they expected. That battle of Ypres was decidedly a Canadian victory.
Captain F. A. C. Scrimger, of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, was attached at the time to the 14th (Royal Montreal) Battalion. On April 22nd he was in charge of an advanced dressing station situated in an old farm building near the battered city of Ypres. The house was surrounded by a moat over which there was only one road; and that afternoon, during the heavy fighting, the German artillery found the lonely house and began to sh.e.l.l it.
For three days and nights Scrimger worked among the wounded, heedless of the pandemonium of the battle, in a situation which was perilous in the extreme. The Germans, in their forward rush, brought the farm within rifle range, but still Scrimger and his staff went about their work.
On the afternoon of the 25th the German artillery sent over incendiary sh.e.l.ls, and one of these, landing on the farm, set the place alight. The staff were at last forced to move.
The single road was almost impa.s.sable owing to a heavy German shrapnel barrage, but the wounded were nevertheless taken back to places of comparative safety. Some of the staff, and some of the less badly wounded patients, swam the moat. They were all removed except one badly injured officer; for him swimming was out of the question.
Scrimger took upon himself the task of saving this patient, but, as he was preparing to move, several direct hits were made on the house by the German artillery. Shrapnel burst through the rafters. Scrimger bent over his patient, protecting him with his body as the splinters fell around them, and finally, during a lull, carried him out of the blazing house on his back.
But in the open there was not even the protection of the shaky walls of the farm, and Scrimger had not gone far with his burden when he saw that the officer was too severely wounded to bear this kind of journeying.
There was no shelter in sight, nothing but the shrapnel-swept wastes and the torn, shuddering earth.
Laying his patient down, Scrimger remained beside him, shielding him again with his own body, till help arrived later in the day.
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LIEUTENANT F. W. CAMPBELL, 1ST BATTALION
On the afternoon of the 15th of June, 1915, the 1st Canadian Infantry Battalion moved up to a jumping-off position in our front line, with two other battalions of the same brigade on its right, and a third in support. The 7th Division (British) was about to make an attempt to drive the Germans out of an important and formidable position known to our troops as "Stony Mountain," and the 1st Canadian Battalion had been told off to the task of covering and securing that division"s right flank of attack. This meant the conquest and occupation of one hundred and fifty yards of the enemy"s front line running southwards from "Stony Mountain" to another German stronghold called "Dorchester." It was too big a job to be undertaken in a casual, slap-dash manner or a happy-go-lucky spirit. Experts prepared it, and the artillery and the engineers took a hand in it.