1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [111]
21 April I went to see the house of my uncle, who had spent a very bad night in the cellars, even though the night was quiet. Not being able to find a car anywhere to take him to Poperinghe, I advised him to take a porter and set off on the Vlamertinghe road, where, by offering a tip, he might be picked up by one or other of the ambulances. This he did.
At mid-day we learned that the eight big shells that arrived yesterday afternoon from the direction of Staden were 380 mm in diameter. This news threw consternation among my friends and it decided some of them to leave the town in case more of the same arrived. Seven civilians were killed on Monday and ten yesterday, besides that, more than a hundred English soldiers and many more wounded. Nevertheless today is reasonably calm. As for the bombardment, only a few shells were heard.
The Germans were ranging their big guns, still waiting impatiently for the wind to change and for the chance to launch their offensive.
The chance came next day on 22 April – but it was well into the afternoon before the wind shifted direction and began to blow gently towards the south-west. The timing was far from ideal. By the time the messages could be passed along the line, by the time the troops could be alerted and in position, there would not be many hours of daylight left. Ideally the gas should have been released in the morning leaving a long day for the German infantry to advance and press home the advantage and dig in by nightfall. But they had waited so long, they had postponed the attack so often, that when the wind turned in the afternoon of 22 April, the chance was too good to miss. The decision was taken. The codeword ‘Gott strafe Engelland’ was passed along the line. The assault troops were warned and moved into position, the special troops stood by the cylinders ready to open the cocks, the signal rockets were fired. 222 – ‘Everything is ready for the attack.’ 301 – ‘Fair Wind.’ 333 – ‘Get the troops ready to advance.’ There had been several false alarms, and these preliminary signals had been sent up before – always followed by the dispiriting 6666 – ‘Attack Cancelled.’ But this time the front-line German commanders, watching the flares and counting with bated breath, at last saw the signal they had been waiting for. 8888 – ‘Open the gas containers.’ The men of the ‘Stinkpionere’ pulled on their masks, bent over the cylinders, adjusted the long nozzles that would carry the gas into the wind, and wrenched open the cocks that would release it.
The attack came north of Ypres on the left of the salient and it fell in an awkward place, on the shoulder of the line where the Canadians joined hands with the French in front of Poelcapelle, and all across the French front to the Franco/Belgian boundary on the canal near Steenstraat. The Canadian Division had been holding the line for a matter of days, the French were in the process of changing over and their 45th Regiment had just moved into the line and had barely settled down. It was a regiment composed of French Colonials – native troops from North Africa – and it was on them that the full force of the gas cloud descended. At first, it looked as if it were going to envelop the Canadians. Two companies of the 48th Highlanders were in the front line and from his observation post in front of St julien Gunner Jim Sutton had a bird’s eye view.
It had been a quiet day, almost balmy for late April and, although a few shells had fallen in Ypres, away to the right behind them, only an occasional explosion or short burst of machine-gun fire had disturbed the monotonous routine of daytime