1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [131]
That day, 24 April, was the worst day of my life. It started with a really violent bombardment and then – you could only call it a cloud of death when the gas came over, and this time it was directed straight at us. People were suffocating, but some were worse affected than others and the word was passed down that we were to hold on at all costs. We did our best, but first I was wounded in the leg and then, when the Germans were advancing and we got the order to retire, I couldn’t move – naturally. All I can remember much later is a German soldier standing over me pointing his rifle and bayonet at my chest. It was my worst moment of the whole war because, being wounded in the leg, I couldn’t get up and I couldn’t walk. I thought he was going to let me have it. But he didn’t. We were near a deserted farmyard and he handed his rifle to a comrade and went off into this farm and came back a few minutes later with a wheelbarrow. He put me in it and then he pushed me all the way through to their rear dressing station – and it must have been a good mile behind their lines. The German doctors and orderlies were up to their eyes with their own casualties. They couldn’t do a lot for us. We wounded prisoners were laid down on some straw in a church hall and there we lay from Saturday to Monday. Then they put us in box-cars and took us to Paderborn in Westphalia, a journey of two or three days. They gave us a meal, and I remember thinking it was the first hot food I’d had for a week.
But the Canadians were holding the Germans at one dangerous point they had even counter-attacked, but they could not hold out indefinitely. Nor could the guns. And if the troops were forced to retire, the guns would be in danger.
Lt. Col. P. Burney, 9th Heavy Brig., RGA.
I was commanding the 9th Brigade of Heavy Artillery, consisting of the 71st Heavy Battery of four 4.7-inch guns and the 121st Battery, also 4.7-inch guns. The 121st Battery was in action at Wittepoert Farm, firing in a southerly direction. It was in the forenoon that I got a message by telephone to say that masses of Germans were advancing up the Poelcapelle to St Julien road. I kept Owen’s gun teams near his farm billet, to the rear and towards the railway, and had arranged with him for his line of retreat in case of emergency. Just about 11 a.m. my adjutant, Captain Pask, came up to say that numbers of Canadians were coming back from Zonnebeke and that they were not wounded, but he could not get them to turn back, although he had threatened to shoot them! I went down and in the hall of my billet I found about half a dozen Canadians looking very pale, having choking fits and asking for water. Many others were in the road outside, and none could explain what had happened to them.
I went back to my telephone room and called up Owen, told him the situation, and I asked him to turn his guns end for end (no easy job with a 4.7-inch deep in mud), and get on top of his billet at the farm, where he would probably get a view of the Poelcapelle to St Julien road, and keep up a heavy shrapnel fire on the advancing Germans. As soon as he had used up all his shrapnel he was to report to me on the telephone, or if that was cut, to use his own discretion about retiring along our prearranged route.
My billet was just outside the Menin Gate and around us were two other field artillery Brigade Headquarters, and one Belgian. The enemy were bombarding Ypres with huge 17-inch Howitzers and the shells were falling mostly on the Menin Gate. Both my horses in a stable across the road had been killed and the stable set on fire, and my Adjutant was somewhat worried and wanted to know whether we had better not shift. I told him to have everything packed and put into the wagon and to be ready to move at once.
About 2 p.m. I heard that the Germans had taken St Julien and were pressing on to Wieltje. Just at that moment Owen