CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE FRONT AT LAST
I had been with the Seventy-fifth Battalion about six days when one evening the adjutant gave me a letter which contained orders to proceed the following morning to Camblain L’Abbey. It was well on towards evening when the large motor lorry, on the seat of which I sat next the driver, pulled into the village of Camblain L’Abbey. The old stone church stood on a hill, looking down over the town, and at the base of the hill in a long, level field stood row upon row of one-story Nissen huts, in which were the headquarters of different branches of service of the Canadian Corps.
The lorry stopped at the end of a large plank walk, down which I was directed to walk till I should come to the headquarters of chaplain service. This did not take very long, for presently I was standing before one of the huts, on the door of which appeared the letters C. A. C. S. (Canadian Army Chaplain Service). I knocked on the door and stepped in.
Three military chaplains were sitting in the office; one who bore the insignia of lieutenant-colonel, was signing some papers for a young chaplain who was a captain. The third chaplain, a major, sat in a far corner eating nut-chocolate bars. I looked from one to another. I did not know any of them. I had been expecting to meet Father French, who was the senior Catholic chaplain of the Canadians in France. I made myself known, only to find that all the chaplains were Anglicans, and that Father French was absent on duty and would not be home for two or three days.
That night I dined with many of the staff officers of the Canadian Corps, and slept in the quaint little presbytery of the French curé on the hill. The following evening towards sundown, in company with Lt. Colonel McGrear, chief chaplain for the Church of England, I went to Carency, where I became attached for quarters and rations to the Sixteenth Canadian Scottish, which was one of the battalions of the Third Canadian Infantry Brigade of which I was now R. C. chaplain. My other battalions were the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth. All, with the exception of the Fourteenth, were kilted battalions, and each one had its own band of bag-pipes.
I was somewhat disappointed to find myself attached to the Sixteenth as the Catholic chaplain who had proceeded me had been quartered with the Fourteenth in which was an average of four hundred Catholics; in the Sixteenth the average was about eighty. There was some military reason for my appointment, so all I could do was to obey orders.
We left Camblain L’Abbey and the motor went quickly over the well-kept road. Soon the town, with all the houses still intact, was left far behind, and presently, not far ahead, I saw a large sign-board attached to two posts about fifteen feet high. At the top, in large black block letters, were the words “Gas Alert,” and beneath were words to the effect that from now on all troops must wear their gas masks “at the alert.” This meant that instead of carrying the mask at the side, with the bag closed, it must be tied about the chest, with the bag open, so that in a moment the mask might be raised to the face.
A little nervousness came over me, for now on all sides were signs of great devastation—broken and torn buildings, crumbled walls, fields deeply marked with shell-holes; and the road became rough, for it had been mended in many places after being rent by shells. Less traffic appeared along our way; everything seemed quiet. On our right, in the distance, I noticed what seemed to be a square forest of miniature trees, which, as we drew nearer, became regular in shape and equidistant from one another. As we came still nearer I noticed low mounds, “row on row.” What had seemed to be trees were crosses—a great forest of little low crosses—and between the rows and rows of crosses were the long lines of “the little green tents where the soldiers sleep.” We passed two or three other military cemeteries, then the ruins of a small village or two, where many soldiers looked out from cellar windows or low huts built of pieces of broken stone and scraps of corrugated iron, with a piece of burlap hanging and weighted at the end for a door. Dugouts were built into the hill that sloped up from the roadside. The silence of the whole countryside seemed uncanny. We came up a little hill where, on our right a few hundred feet back from the road, were perhaps a dozen corrugated iron stables, open at the sides, but with a partition the whole length of the hut running through the middle. In the foreground was the basement of what had once been a long, narrow dwelling-house. Here we stopped, for we had come to headquarters of the Sixteenth Battalion, or, to give them their full name, the Sixteenth Canadian Scottish. They were a kilted battalion, hailing from British Columbia.
The colonel told me to remain in the motor till he returned from the orderly room, which I did. In a few minutes he came back with the adjutant and two soldiers. The adjutant welcomed me kindly; the two soldiers picked up my bed-roll and began to carry it towards headquarters. I shook hands with the colonel as he said good-bye. Then I accompanied the adjutant to headquarters. I had arrived at the Western Front.