BX November 18, 1915

Interesting Word Picture Of Life In The Trenches – H.H. May Writes to His Home Here, Telling of Method of Securing Rations For The Men in the Trenches – Found Field of Potatoes Near Trenches and These Helped for a Week or Two

An interesting word picture of life in and out of the trenches in Belgium is given in the following gossipy letter recently received by Mrs. H.H. May of 85 St. George Street, from her husband, who is with the 4th Battalion. The letter is in part, as follows:
 
Today is a lovely day and I am sitting out in the sun writing a letter home to you. Yesterday it rained and blew all day. It was a miserable day but fortunately the mail arrived at noon and brought two letters, one from you and that brightened things up a lot.

We are going into the trenches again tonight, so you will not get another letter for a week. We have had a pretty good time while here. They don’t have as many parades as our old battalion and we do not have to get up early in the morning, and as we are only a little way from a village we have been able to get extra food. We have a big supply of oatmeal, canned milk, sugar, cocoa, bread and candies packed to take into the front line with us. So we shall not be hungry. The cooks and field kitchens do not go into the trenches. We have to do our own cooking at odd times whenever we get a chance. Every night a ration party goes back and meets the transport wagons a mile or so out of danger, they carry up 24 hours’ food in the morning. It is divided up by the sergeants. We get canned beef and biscuits one day and fresh meat and bread the next. We get jam, tea, sugar and cheese every day.  The last time we were in I found a field of potatoes right behind us and I slipped away early one morning and dug enough to do the three of us all the time we were there.

Bert Young, Albert Sage and I were in the same dugout. You can’t get enough water to drink, let alone wash in the trenches every drop has to be carried in. Corporal E.H. Mercer is in the hospital now, but Corporal Stanley is still with us. Say, you ought to see the little carts they use here with three dogs to draw them. I wish I had a camera here to get some pictures of them.

There are a lot of airships above us scouting around and every once in a while, we all jump up and rush into the road to see them fight. They have just brought down a German aeroplane, right behind our lines. One of the men was killed and the other captured. I met Harry Colmer the other night in the village and we had quite a celebration together. We expect to meet again here three weeks from today as both our battalions will be out of the trenches at the  (Letter cuts off)

BX May 29, 1916

Much Artillery Activity in Sector held By Canadians; Huns Keep up Heavy Fire – Pte. H.H. May Tells How Men in the Trenches Are Kept on the Jump by Fritz and His Assortment of Big Guns – New Stunts Are Continually Being Tried Out by Enemy

Mrs. H.H. May, 85 St. George Street has received the following interesting letter from her husband, Pte. Humphrey Herbert May.

Dear Wife,

I have just come off duty and have been handed letters from you and rolls of papers. I have read your letters and opened the papers.
I don’t feel as good as I did a few weeks ago. We are on the jump all the time here. Fritz is keeping us pretty busy all the time. He is always trying some new stunt. It is eleven days since I had a cooked meal. We have been living on bread and marmalade, cold canned beef and cold canned rations. The officers won’t allow us to make a fire to cook with for fear Fritz might see the smoke and send a few shells near us.

I am just covered with vermin. We do not get a bath as often as we used to because Fritz shells all the roads and communication trenches all the time and you can only move around at night. He is very busy with his artillery just now and if he sees anything move he will throw all kinds of shells at it.

In these trenches he is on three sides of us and he snipes us unmercifully day and night. You hardly dare to walk up or down your own trench for fear of a bullet. Fritz hasn’t used his gas much lately, but he is doing a lot of mining and blows our trenches up from underneath the ground. Before this letter reaches you there will be another big scrap right here. Both sides are facing things up, and each side is just waiting for the other to move.

In Close Quarters

Before we came here we were in some dugouts in a field just outside a big bush and Fritz did not know the dugouts were there, although they were right out in the open. They were well hidden from aeroplanes. So we were not allowed outside the dugout in daylight and we were not allowed to light a fire. For eight days we had cold grub and stayed in those stuffy smelling dugouts from four in the morning till eight at night. We were not in the trenches then, but we were what they call “in reserve.”  So long as nothing serious happened in the front line we just stay in reserve until our time comes to go up to the firing line. As soon as it gets dark they take out the reserve to go on working parties up in the firing lines. These working parties fix up the trenches where they have been blown in carrying up stuff for building dugouts and boarding up the sides of the trench, and carry out the dead. But as long as there is no big scrap on the reserves sneak back just about daylight and hide up till night comes.

A Mine Explosion

One afternoon about four o’clock Fritz blew up a mine just behind our front line and started to come over to take the front line trenches from our gang. Just imagine the state of those poor fellows in our trenches when the mine went up. The shock stunned most of those who were not killed outright and there were only a very few men able to put up any kind of a scrap. Our machine guns mowed Fritz down in heaps but a few of them got in our front line in two or three spots and stayed there until our bombers bombed them all out or up.

The bombardment on both sides was something awful. Al the big guns were going at once and what with the noise of the shells and bombs it was something awful. Both sides threw over what is called a “curtain of fire.”  Now a curtain of fire means that a certain wide belt of ground behind the lines is under a continual shower of shrapnel, with a few high-power big shells as well, but mostly all high explosive shrapnel. That is to say they threw a curtain of shrapnel over roads, hedges, ditches, trenches, fields and everything for a certain distance back of the lines. The idea is to prevent reserves and supports of troops from getting into the front lines.

After the Firing

When the mine went up Fritz had been bombarding our front line and had blown it in, in spots. So the boys were not all in touch with one another. Here and there were a few men, then there would be a span where a big shell or perhaps a trench mortar had landed and blown everything sky-high, and then a little farther down there might be another bunch of the lads, but they would not be able to see each other and they would not know how the others were getting on and would not be able to help each other, because in order to get to each other, they would have to show themselves to Fritz when they went over the places where the trenches were blown down or filled in. The men who were buried alive would have to stay buried until the scrap was over and the wounded could not be attended to or be carried out until the trenches were fixed up. Each man carries a bandage and some disinfectant with him and if his chum is too busy to help he has to bandage himself. Many men have died just for the lack of a few moments’ attention at the time they were wounded, but that is because it was absolutely impossible at that time to look after them properly. They do all they possibly can to help the wounded, but under shell fire there are some things that cannot be done. In any case the wounded are only tied up and bandaged in the trenches. Then they are attended to in the dressing stations. The dressing stations may be a mile away or three miles, or they may be located in places where Fritz cannot get at them with his artillery. Fritz likes to shell dressing stations. From them the wounded man goes to the nearest hospital and then he is all right. Generally speaking if a wounded man once gets as far as the dressing station, unless he has been mortally injured, he will come through all right, as one gets the best of attention from these men. 

An Afternoon’s Scrap

Well, after all this beating about the bush I will try to tell about that afternoon’s scrap. First of all Fritz opened up a big bombardment to make our lads keep their heads down and to damage the front line as much as possible. Then he exploded his mine, started his curtain fire and made a charge. By this time our batteries were going full blaze.  Our batteries put up a curtain fire to keep Fritz from coming across “no man’s land” and Fritz put up his curtain fire to prevent us putting live men into the front line to replace the dead and wounded. So, between the shells, shrapnel, bombs, machine gun and rifle fire the poor infantrymen, both Canadian and German, certainly did catch blazes. But we had the best of it and only a few Germans got into our front line alive and they did not stay alive very long. In spite of the fact that it was a surprise attack, in spite of his mine and high explosives, Fritz was beaten. In six hours at the most it was all over and Fritz was back behind his own lines, keeping very quiet.

Artillery Saved Day

However Fritz came within an ace of making it so the signallers phoned the batteries the S.O.S. signal and just a minute afterwards a shell put all the wires out of commission. It would take a man an hour to carry a message to the batteries and perhaps a dozen men would be shot before one got through with the message. It was the prompt response of the batteries and their well-timed shrapnel and accurately placed shells that saved the day. If the wire had been broken a minute sooner Fritz would have got a good footing in our trenches. Of course he would have been driven out again in the end, but it would have cost a pile of lives to move him.

Utilize Red Cross

Old Fritz tried a new stunt as the mine went up. You can understand how excited all the lads would be in an affair like this. Well, Fritz gambled on that and sent over four stretcher bearers with a stretcher just before he made his charge. These four men had Canadian uniforms on and Red Cross badges. They evidently figured it out that they would not be noticed in the excitement of the mine explosion and that they could establish themselves in a section of our trench. However one of the machine gunners did not like their looks and swung his gun in their direction. They immediately dropped the stretcher and started throwing bombs at the machine gun men. They did not throw very many before they were killed. They had three sand bags full of bobs on the stretcher.

The Reserve Forces

We were as I have already told you in reserve, and did not see the mine go up, but we sure felt the ground tremble and we knew no shell ever could shake the ground quite as badly as that. In a few minutes everything was smoke and dust and you could not see much of anything. Then our signaller reported his wires out of action and all we could do was to wait for orders. We could tell just what had happened by the sound of the guns and as soon as Fritz commenced his curtain fire we knew we were in for something pretty warm. After a while a runner came in with orders for us to advance at once. We did not pack up. We left everything where it lay. I left my overcoat, rubber shoes, raincape, socks and pack in the dugout and beat it with my rifle and skeleton equipment.

Advance Under Fire

We had to advance under shell fire and I sure was nervous. We did not go straight up. Our officers were too wise for that. A zig-zag here and there across a field or up a bit of road, then off to one side into another field, then back up the road for another double. They seemed to know just where Fritz was going to send the next lot of shells, and they certainly did use some judgment. They took us into a field and we laid down for a few minutes while Fritz pounded the hedge along side the road. The moment he quit walloping that hedge they doubled us to it and we lay in the shell holes and ditches while Fritzy blew the middle of the field into the next township. They kept working us here and there but always toward the end of the first communication trench. When they reached the trench the senior officer, who was of course in front, stood there and saw that all his men got under cover. He was hit in the shoulder but stayed until the last man was brought into the trench.

Praise For Walsh

I noticed Harris Walsh when we were out in the open and let me tell you he was right there with the goods. Now it is bad enough in the trenches when they are shelling but out in the open is a hundred times worse. Mr. Walsh led his platoon from point to point just as easy as he used to steal bases at home. We were the first bunch to arrive and the officers were complimented on getting us there so quickly.

We were not needed and did not see Fritz in action. They put us all out of sight in a railroad cutting just behind the line in case Fritz made another advance but Fritz had got enough of advancing and he was satisfied. So he bombarded us for a couple of hours or so and then quit. We stayed there until nearly daylight and then we sneaked back to our dugouts without firing a shot. The front line did not need any assistance to do their fighting but on the following night I was one of a party that was sent up to put barb wire around the crater of their line. As Fritz was only 25 yards away and sending up all kinds of flares, I did not relish the job, but out here you do what you are told even if you don’t particularly like it.
    
I am going to quit now but will try to write you again in a day or so. We have a little spare time in the trenches but I cannot write letters when Fritz is shelling us. Some of the lads can but I don’t seem to be able to keep my mind on the letter when he starts sending them over. Today he is quiet and so I am writing to you. Good-bye and good luck. 

Best wishes to all.