The Crossing of the Canal Du Nord.
September 27th, 1918.

When I got to the sunken road above Inchy I found that No. 1 Company of the Machine-Gun Battalion had a little sandbag house there, and were waiting for the attack. I went in and the young officers and men made me at home at once. I divested myself of my pack, coat and steel helmet, and determined to settle down for the night. Suddenly a shell burst in the road, and I went out to see if anyone was hit. Two or three men were wounded but not severely. We got them in and the young O.C. of the company bound up their wounds and sent them off. There was a row of these sandbag-huts against the bank, and at one end of them was the entrance to a dugout in which the 1st Battalion and the General of the 1st Brigade had made their headquarters. I went down the steep steps into a long dark passage, lit here and there by the light which came from the rooms on either side. The whole place was crowded with men and the atmosphere was more than usually thick. I made my way down to the end where there was a pump which had been put there by the Germans. Here the men were filling their water-bottles, and I got a fresh supply for mine. Not far from the pump a few steps led down into a room where I found the C.O. and a number of the officers of the 1st Battalion. It was about two a.m., and they were having a breakfast of tea and bacon and invited me to join them. After the meal was finished, the Colonel, who was lying on a rough bed, said to me, "Sit down, Canon, and give us some of your nature poems to take our minds off this beastly business." It was very seldom that I was invited to recite my own poems, so such an opportunity could not be lost. I sat down on the steps and repeated a poem which I wrote among the Laurentian mountains, in the happy days before we ever thought of war. It is called, "The Unnamed Lake."

"It sleeps among the thousand hills
Where no man ever trod,
And only nature's music fills
The silences of God.

Great mountains tower above its shore,
Green rushes fringe its brim,
And o'er its breast for evermore
The wanton breezes skim.

Dark clouds that intercept the sun
Go there in Spring to weep,
And there, when Autumn days are done,
White mists lie down to sleep.

Sunrise and sunset crown with gold
The peaks of ageless stone,
Where winds have thundered from of old
And storms have set their throne.

No echoes of the world afar
Disturb it night or day,
But sun and shadow, moon and star
Pass and repass for aye.

'Twas in the grey of early dawn,
When first the lake we spied,
And fragments of a cloud were drawn
Half down the mountain side.

Along the shore a heron flew,
And from a speck on high,
That hovered in the deepening blue,
We heard the fish-hawk's cry.

Among the cloud-capt solitudes,
No sound the silence broke,
Save when, in whispers down the woods,
The guardian mountains spoke.

Through tangled brush and dewy brake,
Returning whence we came,
We passed in silence, and the lake
We left without a name."

There is not much in the poem, but, like a gramophone record, it carried our minds away into another world. For myself, who remembered the scenery that surrounded me when I wrote it and who now, in that filthy hole, looked at the faces of young men who in two or three hours were to brave death in one of the biggest tasks that had been laid upon us, the words stirred up all sorts of conflicting emotions. The recitation seemed to be so well received that I ventured on another—in fact several more—and then I noticed a curious thing. It was the preternatural silence of my audience. Generally speaking, when I recited my poems, one of the officers would suddenly remember he had to dictate a letter, or a despatch rider would come in with orders. Now, no one stirred. I paused in the middle of a poem and looked round to see what was the matter, and there to my astonishment, I found that everyone, except the young Intelligence Officer, was sound asleep. It was the best thing that could have happened and I secretly consoled myself with the reflection that the one who was unable to sleep was the officer who specialized in intelligence. We both laughed quietly, and then I whispered to him, "We had better go and find some place where we, too, can get a little rest." He climbed over the prostrate forms and followed me down the passage to a little excavation where the Germans had started to make a new passage. We lay down side by side on the wooden floor, and I was just beginning to succumb to the soothing influences of my own poetry, when I thought I felt little things crawling over my face. It was too much for me. I got up and said, "I think I am getting crummy, so I'm going off." I looked in on the General and the Brigade Major, and then climbed up the steps and went to the machine-gun hut.

The night was now well advanced so it was time to shave and get ready for zero hour. A little after five we had some breakfast, and about a quarter past I went up to the top of the bank above the road and waited for the barrage. At 5.20 the savage roar burst forth. It was a stupendous attack. Field guns, heavy guns, and siege batteries sent forth their fury, and machine-guns poured millions of rounds into the country beyond the Canal. So many things were flying about and landing near us, that we went back under cover till the first burst of the storm should subside. At that moment I knew our men were crossing the huge ditch, and I prayed that God would give them victory. When the barrage had lifted I started down towards the Canal, passing through a field on my way where I found, lying about, dead and wounded men. Four or five were in a straight line, one behind another, where a German machine-gun must have caught them as they advanced. A young officer of the 2nd Battalion was dying from wounds. Two or three decorations on his breast told his past record in the war. While I was attending to the sufferers, a sergeant came up to me from the direction of the Canal and asked the way to the dressing station. He had a frightful wound in his face. A bit of a shell had dug into his cheek, carrying off his nose. He did not know at the time how badly he had been hit. I asked him if he wanted me to walk back with him, but he said he was all right as the dressing station was not far off. I often wondered what became of him, and I never heard till the following year when a man came up to me in the military hospital at St. Anne's, with a new nose growing comfortably on his face and his cheek marked with a scar that was not unsightly. "The last time I met you, Sir," he said, "was near the Canal du Nord when you showed me the way to the dressing station." I was indeed glad to find him alive and well, and to see what surgical science had done to restore his beauty.

I went on to the Canal, and found that at that point it was quite dry. I climbed down to the bottom of it in which men were walking and the sappers were at work. Some ladders enabled me to get up on the other side and I had the joy of feeling that the Canadians had crossed the great Canal du Nord. Our battalions were now moving up and I joined them, avoiding a part of a field which the men told me was under the fire of a machine-gun from the mill in Marquion. The country was open and green. The day was fine, and once more we experienced the satisfaction of taking possession of the enemy's territory. Before us the ground rose in a gradual slope, and we did not know what might meet us when we arrived at the top, but it was delightful to go with the men feeling that every step was a gain. When we got to the top of the rise, we had a splendid view of the country beyond. Before us, in the distance running from right to left, lay the straight Arras-Cambrai road with its rows of tall trees. Where we stood, there were a number of deserted German trenches. Here the M.O. of the 3rd Battalion opened up an aid post, and the chaplain went about looking for the wounded. Our men went on down into the valley and got into some forward trenches. I stayed on the hill looking at the wonderful scene through my German glasses. On the left in a quarry beside the village of Marquion, I saw two Germans manning a machine-gun. Our 3rd Brigade had taken the place, and some Highlanders were walking on the edge of the quarry just above the Huns, of whose presence they were unaware. I saw the enemy suddenly hide themselves, having noticed the approach of the Highlanders, but when the latter had passed the two Boches reappeared and went on firing as before. It was not long before the German artillery turned their guns on our hill and I told some men of the 2nd Brigade, who were now coming forward, to take cover in the trench or go in extended order. I had hardly uttered the words when a shell burst, killing one man and wounding in the thigh the one to whom I was talking. I went over to him and found that no artery had been cut, and the chaplain of the 3rd Battalion got him carried off. Down in the valley our advance had evidently been checked for a time. While I was trying to see what the trouble was, a young officer, called Cope, of the 8th Battalion came up to me. He was a splendid young fellow, and looked so fresh and clean. He had lost a brother in the Battalion in the early part of the war. I said, "How old are you, Cope?" He replied, "I am twenty." I said, "What a glorious thing it is to be out here at twenty." "Yes," he said, looking towards the valley, "it is a glorious thing to be out here at twenty, but I should like to know what is holding them up." He had hardly spoken when there was a sharp crack of a machine-gun bullet and he dropped at my side. The bullet had pierced his steel helmet and entered his brain. He never recovered consciousness, and died on the way to the aid post.

The 2nd Brigade was now moving forward, so I went down the hill past a dugout which had been used as a German dressing station. There I secured a bottle of morphine tablets, and spoke to our wounded waiting to be carried off. Just before I reached the Arras-Cambrai road, I came to the trench where the C.O. of the 3rd Battalion had established himself. The chaplain and I were talking when an officer of the 2nd Battalion came back with a bad wound in the throat. He could not speak, but made signs that he wanted to write a message. We got him some paper and he wrote, "The situation on our right is very bad." The 4th Division were on our right, and they had been tied up in Bourlon Wood. So now our advancing 2nd Brigade had their right flank in the air. As a matter of fact their left flank was also exposed, because the British Division there had also been checked in their advance. I crossed the road into the field, where I found the 5th and 10th Battalions resting for a moment before going on to their objective. In front of us, looking very peaceful among its trees, was the village of Haynecourt which the 5th Battalion had to take. The 10th Battalion was to pass it on the left and go still further forward. We all started off, and as we were nearing the village I looked over to the fields on the right, and there, to my dismay, I saw in the distance numbers of little figures in grey which I knew must be Germans. I pointed them out to a sergeant, but he said he thought they were French troops who were in the line with us. The 5th Battalion went through Haynecourt and found the village absolutely deserted and the houses stripped of everything that might be of any value. Their C.O. made his headquarters in a trench to the north of the village, and the 10th disappeared going forward to the Douai-Cambrai road.

It was now quite late in the afternoon. The sun was setting, and I feared that if I did not go back in time I might find myself stuck out there for the night without any food or cover. I thought it was wise therefore to go to Deligny's Mill, where I understood the machine-gunners were established. In the road at the entrance of Haynecourt, I found a young German wounded in the foot and very sorry for himself. I think he was asking me to carry him, but I saw he could walk and so showed him the direction in which to make his way back to our aid posts. I was just going back over the fields when I met a company of our light trench mortar batteries. The men halted for a rest and sat down by the road, and an officer came and said to me, "Come and cheer up the men, Canon, they have dragged two guns eight kilometres in the dust and heat and they are all fed up." I went over to them, and, luckily having a tin of fifty cigarettes in my pocket, managed to make them go round. I asked the O.C. if he would like me to spend the night with them. He said he would, so I determined not to go back. Some of the men asked me if I knew where they could get water. I told them they might get some in the village, so off we started. It makes a curious feeling go through one to enter a place which has just been evacuated by the enemy. In the evening light, the little b............