World War, 1914-1918 -- Canada; World War, 1914-1918 -- Nova Scotia
March 21st passed and the Huns’ great attack which was to last nine
terrible days commenced. It was to the south of us, and not till the
28th did it reach our neighborhood. But Arras remained firm, and there
was no advance worth speaking about on our front. At 3 a.m. the enemy
started shelling the Battery with gas. He attacked persistently with
heavy gun fire till 12 noon and again in the afternoon. At night every
half hour he put down bursts of harassing fire and concentrations, but
the fire of the Battery was kept up in spite of it and gas. The next day
the enemy continued his tactics; not a half hour but Battery, billets,
roads and railway received his attention. Two of the signallers (Dickey
and West) did noble work in repairing our telephone line, nearly a mile,
through a regular barrage of high explosive and gas, their job being
made more difficult by some defensive wire entanglements which had been
recently placed over our line.
Now succeeded several months when the enemy’s chief energies were
directed to other parts of the Front, and the British Army was
recovering from its wounds, filling up its ranks and organizing for the
coming glorious advance which was to end the war. During these months
the Battery had positions at Souchez and Lievin, neither of these being
pleasant spots, but where life was more or less normal; that is, daily
and nightly tasks of firing, sometimes counter battery shoots, sometimes
destructive shoots, or harassing fire, to all of which the Hun replied
in kind. At Lievin he gave us two bad gas bombardments, but the results,
had he known them, would have been bitterly disappointing to him, to
such an extent had we been educated by this time in anti-gas measures.
At Villers Cagnicourt Chère was some heavy firing and obstinate fighting
before the enemy was driven across the Canal du Nord. At Barelle Wood
the Battery was a day, and at Sauchy Lestree, during the fight for
Cambrai, which was very severe, several days were spent. At this place
the Huns’ night bombers were very active.
But it was now moving warfare in earnest. Blecourt and Batigny were hot
places for a day or two. At Marquette and Escaydain a night only was
spent in each. Wavrechain-sous-Denain was easy. At Herin the Battery
took part in the very fine artillery preparation for the taking of
Valenciennes, and at St. Saulve on Nov. 4th it had its last casualty of
one man killed.
During all this moving warfare, conditions were a great contrast to the
previous trench warfare. Guns sometimes took up positions in fields
almost untouched by shell-fire. The laborious gun pit was nearly
unknown. The woods and trees were no longer shot to pieces, and
occasionally one walked into billets to find cut flowers still fresh on
the window sill, or table, left there by the retiring Hun the day before
or by its civil occupants who had been forced to leave with him.
9th CANADIAN SIEGE BATTERY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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