THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT

GEORGE PEARSON

THE ESCAPE OF A
PRINCESS PAT

Being the full account of the capture and fifteen months'
imprisonment of Corporal Edwards, of the Princess
Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, and his
final escape from Germany into Holland

BY

GEORGE PEARSON

McCLELLAND, GOODCHILD & STEWART

PUBLISHERS :: :: :: TORONTO

COPYRIGHT, 1918,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO THE MEMORY OF

OUR COMRADES WHO FELL

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

PREFACE

In order to remove all question of doubt in the mind of the reader it might perhaps be well to state here that the facts as given are the bona fide experiences of Corporal Edwards, Number 39, Number One Company, P. P. C. L. I., and as such were subjected to the closest scrutiny both by the author and others before it was deemed advisable to give the account to the public. In particular great pains were taken to do full justice to all enemy individuals who figure in the story.

Recognizing the seriousness of the charges implied by the recital, all those concerned with it are extremely anxious that the correctness of the account should constitute its chief value: In short the intention has been to make of the story a readable history.

The main facts—having to do with the destruction of the regiment on the eighth of May, 1915, the identity and activities of the individuals mentioned and the more important of the later happenings, including the final escape into Holland—are matters of official record and as such have frequently been mentioned in the official dispatches. The more personal details are based on the recollections of Corporal Edwards' retentive mind, aided by his very unusual powers of observation and the rough diary which he managed to retain possession of during his later adventures.

For the events preceding the capture of Corporal Edwards on the eighth of May the author has relied upon his own recollections; as he too had the honor of having been "an original Patricia."

G.P.

Sept. 1, 1917.
Toronto, Canada.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT

THE ESCAPE OF
A PRINCESS PAT

CHAPTER I

Polygon Wood

The Princess Patricias had lain in Polygon Wood since the twentieth of April, mid-way between the sanguinary struggles of St. Julien and Hill 60, spectators of both. Although subjected to constant alarm we had had a comparatively quiet time of it, with casualties that had only varied from five to fifty-odd each day.

By day and night the gun-fire of both battles had beat back upon us in great waves of sound. There were times when we had donned our water soaked handkerchiefs for the gas that always threatened but never came, so that the expectation might have shaken less steady troops. Quick on the heels of the first news of the gas the women of Britain, their tears scalding their needles, with one accord had laboured, sans rest, sans sleep, sans everything, so that shortly there had poured in to us here a steady stream of gauze pads for mouth and nostril. For the protection of our lungs against the poison of the gas they were at least better than the filthy rags we called handkerchiefs. We wore their gifts and in spirit bowed to the donors, as I think all still do.

Once there had come word in a special army order of the day: "Our Belgian agent reports that all enemy troops on this front have been directed to enter their trenches to-night with fixed bayonets. All units are enjoined to exercise the closest watch on their front; the troops will stand to from the first appearance of darkness, with each man at his post prepared for all eventualities. Sleep will not be permitted under any circumstances."

The consequence had been that that night had been one of nervous expectation of an attack which did not materialise. We always carried fixed bayonets in the trenches but the Germans were better equipped with loopholes, as they were with most other things, and were forced to leave their bayonets off their rifles in order to avoid any danger of the latter sticking in their metal shields when needed in a hurry, to say nothing of the added attention they would draw in their exposed and stationary position at the mouth of a loophole. The "Stand-to" had come as a distinct relief that morning.

And always there had been the glowering fires of a score of villages. The greater mass of burning Ypres stood up amongst them like the warning finger of God. Occasionally the roaring burst of an ammunition dump flared up into a volcano of fiery sound. The earth under our feet trembled in convulsive shudders from a cannonade so vast that no one sound could be picked out of it and the walls of dug-outs slid in, burying sleeping men. But like the promise of God there came to us in every interval of quietness, as always, the full-throated song of many birds.

Our forces consisted of the French who held the left corner of the Ypres salient, then the Canadian division in the centre, next the 28th Division of the regular British Army and then our own, the 27th, with Hill 60 on our right flank. The enemy attacked both at Hill 60 and at the line of the Canadian Division and the French, and we held on to the horse-shoe shaped line until the last possible moment when one more shake of the tree would have thrown us like ripe fruit into the German lap.

So near had the converging German forces approached to one another that the weakened battery behind our own trenches had been at the last, turned around the other way and fired in the opposite direction without a shift in its own position. For our own protection we had nothing. And later still these and all other guns left us to seek new positions in the rear so that only we of the infantry remained.

Daily there had come orders to "Stand-to" in full marching order, to evacuate; at which all ranks expostulated angrily. And then perhaps another order—to stick it another day; at which we cheered and slapped one another boisterously on the back so that the stolid Germans over yonder must have wondered, knowing what they did of our desperate situation.

But the dreaded order came at last and was confirmed, so that under protest and like the beaten men that we knew we were not, we slunk away under cover of darkness on the night of the third of May to trenches three miles in the rear, and with us went the troops on ten more miles of British front.

The movement as executed was in reality a feat of no mean importance on the part of the higher command. Faced by an overwhelmingly superior force, our badly depleted three divisions had barely escaped being bagged in the net of which the enemy had all but drawn the noose in a strategetic surrounding movement.

In detail, the movement had consisted of withdrawing under cover of darkness with all that we could carry of our trench material, both to prevent it falling into hostile hands and equally to strengthen our new position. A small rearguard of fifteen men to the regiment had held our front for the few hours necessary for us to "shake down" in the new position. Their task was to remain behind and to give a continuous rapid-fire from as many different spots as possible in a given time, thereby keeping up the illusion of a heavily manned trench. Then, they too had faded quietly away, following us.

Our new trenches were three miles behind those we had just evacuated in Polygon Wood. Zillebeke lay just to the left and beyond that, Hooge. We were in the open, with Belle-waarde Wood and Lake behind us.

We continued to face vastly superior forces. To make matters worse the trenches were assuredly a mockery of their kind and there was even less of adequate support than before. And at that the drafts arrived each day—if they were lucky enough to break through the curtains of fire with which the enemy covered our rear for that very purpose, as well as for the further one of curtailing the arrival of all necessary supplies of food and ammunition.

Every camp and hospital from Ypres to Rouen and the sea and from Land's End to John O' Groat was combed and scraped for every eligible casualty, every overconfident office holder of a "cushy" job, and in short, for all those who could by hook or crook hold a rifle to help stem this threatening tide. And in our own lot, even those wasteful luxuries, the petted officers' servants were amongst us, doing fighting duty for the first time, so that we almost welcomed the desperate occasion which furnished so rare and sweet a sight.

CHAPTER IIToC

The Fourth of May

We suffered cruelly on the Fourth. The dawn had discovered two long lines of men, madly digging in plain sight of one another. There was no firing except that one little storm when the stronger light had shown our rear guard ridiculously tangled up with a screen of German scouts so that some of each were nearer to foe than to friend and so had foes on either side. They shot at one another. Some of us in our excitement shot at both, scarce able to distinguish one from the other. Others amongst us strove to knock their rifles up. And the Germans in their trenches shot too. Both of us of the main bodies continued to respect the tacit truce imposed by the conditions under which we found ourselves, insofar as we ourselves were concerned, and fired only at the poor fellows in between.

As for them, I fear the absurd nature of their tragic plight excited more of wonder than of concern. They merged into hedges and ditches swallowed them. Their case was only one incident of many, and what became of them I have never heard, except that Lieutenant Lane who commanded our rear guard was with us on the Eighth, so I presume that some must have crawled up to us that night and so saved themselves for the moment. Anything else would have been a great pity for so brave a squad.

The digging continued until the better equipped Germans had finished their task; when they sought their holes with one accord, an example which we as quickly followed.

This was at nine o'clock on the morning of the fourth of May. From then on until dusk the intensity of a furious all-day bombardment by every known variety of projectile had been broken only at intervals to allow of the nearer approach of the enemy's attacking infantry. The worst was the enfilade fire of two batteries on our right which with six-inch high explosive shells tore our front line to fragments so that we were

Some infantry attacks followed but were beaten off. Only a weak half of the battalion was in the front line trench. The remainder were in Belle-waarde Wood, the outer fringe of which was a bare one hundred yards behind the front line. They were fairly comfortable in pine bough huts which were, however, with some of their occupants, badly smashed by shell fire that day.

The outcome was that although all attacks were beaten off, our losses were well on to two hundred men, most of whom were accounted for in the more exposed front line.

The order had been that we were to hold this front for several days more although the regiment had been in the trenches since April the 20th, and, except for a march back to Ypres from Polygon Wood, since early April. But after such a smashing blow on men who were already thoroughly exhausted, the plan was changed and our line was taken over by the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, the "Shrops" we called them, a sister regiment in our brigade, the 80th.

CHAPTER IIIToC

Corporal Edwards Takes up the Tale

It was on this day that I rejoined the regiment. I had been wounded in the foot at St. Eloi in February and had come up in a draft fresh from hospital and had lain in the supports at the huts all of the Fourth.

The survivors of the front line fire joined those at the huts shortly after nightfall. They were stupid from shell fire, too dazed to talk. I saw one man wandering in half circles, talking to himself—and with a heavy pack on. There were others in worse plight; so there was no help for him.

Myself, I was too much engrossed in a search for my comrade Woods to bother with other men less dear, however much I might sympathise with them.

He and I had been "mates" since Toronto days, had made good cheer together in the hot August days of mobilisation at Ottawa and had rubbed mess tins together under the starry sky at Levis before the great Armada had taken us to English camps and other scenes.

It was he who had fetched me out of danger at St. Eloi. And now it was my turn. They told me he was somewhere on a stretcher.

I searched them all. I struck matches—and was met by querulous curses; I knelt by the side of the dying; I inquired of those wounded who still could walk, but find him I could not. It appears that a new and heavy moustache had helped to hide him from me. I was in great distress, but in the fullness of time and when our small circles had run their route, I discovered him in Toronto.

The word was that we were to go to Vlamertinghe, where the Zeppelins had bombed us in our huts. It lay well below threatened Ypres.

We of Number One Company passed Belle-waarde Lake, with its old dug-outs and its smells, and struck off across the fields, the better to avoid the heavy barrage fire which made all movement of troops difficult beyond words. We reached the railroad up and down which in quieter times the battalion had been wont to march to and fro to the Polygon Wood trenches.

The fire became heavier here and the going was rough so that what with the burden of packs which seemed to weigh a ton and all other things; we moved in a mass, as sheep do. When slung rifles jostled packs, good friends cursed one another both loud and long. This was trench nerves.

Shortly, we ran into a solid wall of barrage fire. The officer commanding the company halted us. We were for pushing on to that rest each aching bone and muscle, each tight-stretched and shell-dazed nerve fairly screamed aloud for. But he was adamant. We cursed him. He pretended not to hear. This also was trench nerves.

It was growing late. The star shells became fewer. The search-lights ceased altogether. In half an hour those keen eyes in distant trees and steeples would have marked us down—and what good then the agony of this all-night march? Better to have been killed back there in Belle-waarde. We were still a good two miles from Ypres town.

The officer literally drove us back over the way we had come. His orders had anticipated this eventuality so that rather than force the passage of the barrage fire, merely for a rest, we should rest here where no rest was to be had. Undoubtedly, if we had been "going up" it would have been different. We should have gone on—no fire would have stopped us.

The half hour limit brought us to a murky daylight and an old and sloppy support trench which bordered the track and into which we flung ourselves, to lay in the water in a dull stupor that was neither sleep nor honest waking.

Later, when the rations had been "dished out" we bestirred ourselves and so found or dug queer coffin-shaped shelves in either wall. Out of courtesy we called them dug-outs.

I do not remember that any one spoke much of the dead.

The rain stopped and for a time the unaccustomed sun came out. We drove stakes in the walls above our coffins, hunted sand-bags and hung them and spare equipment over the open face and then crawled back into the water which, as usual, was already forming in the hollows that our hips made where we lay. Until noon there was little heard but the thick breathing of weary men. Occasionally one tossed and shouted blasphemous warnings anent imaginary and bursting shells; whereat those within hearing whined in a tired and hopeless anger, and, if close by, kicked him. Trench nerves.

All day the fire of many guns sprayed us. Near by, the well defined emplacement of one of our own batteries inevitably drew to the entire vicinity a heavy fire so that one shell broke fair amongst our sleeping men.

CHAPTER IVToC

Major Gault Comes Back

"The King Is Dead": "Long Live the King"—Back to Belle-waarde—The Seventh of May.

That was on the fifth. In the afternoon young Park came to us. He was the Commanding Officer's orderly. There was down on his face but he was full of all that strange wisdom of a trenchman who had experienced the bitter hardships and the heartbreaking losses of a winter in the cursed salient of St. Eloi, by Shelley Farm and The Mound of Death. But just now this infant of the trenches had the round eyes of a startled child, which in him meant mad excitement.

"The C.O.'s hit."

The word slid up the trench: "The C.O.'s hit."

"Strike me! Cawn't this bleedin' regiment keep a bleedin' Colonel——? That makes two of them!"

"How did it happen?"

"What the devil are we goin' to do?"

"Who says so?"

"The second in six weeks!"

"Parkie."

"By——! This mob's in a Hell of a fix, Bo'."

Park was leaning on his rifle, trench fashion. "Oh, dry up. You give me a pain."

And then he launched his thunderbolt, "Gault's back."

The chorus of despair became one of wild delight.

"We're jake!" "He'll see us through." "Where is he?" "How's his arm?" "The son-of-a-gun! Couldn't keep him away, could they?"

"No fear. Not 'im. Bloody well wanted to be wiv 'is bleedin' boys, 'e did. 'E ain't bloody well goin' to do 'is bloody solderin' in a 'cushy' job in Blighty—like some of 'em. Not after rysin' us. Do it wiv 'is bloody self like a man; an' that's wot 'e is."

The speaker glared accusingly; but his declaration agreed too well with what all thought for any one to take exception to it.

The new Commanding Officer had been wounded at St. Eloi on March 1st and this was our first intimation of his return.

Park took up his tale. "He's over there with the C.O. now," and switching: "Shell splinter got him in the eye. Guess it's gone and maybe the other one too."

"By——!" he burst out passionately: "I hope it don't. He's been damn good to me—and to you fellows too," he added fiercely, while his lower lip quivered.

I think all stared anywhere but at Park, in a curious embarrassment.

"Got it goin' from one trench to another to see about the rations comin' up instead of stayin' in like a 'dug-out wallah.' Got out on top of the ground, walked across an' stopped one," he added bitterly.

A considerable draft of "old boys," ruddy of face and fresh from hospital, together with some more new men reached us that night. We "went up" again with the dusk of the following night and "took over" our previous trenches in front of Belle-waarde Wood.

We were told that the Shropshires had been rather badly cut up in the interval of their occupation by a further course of intense bombardment and some fierce infantry fighting. Nevertheless, the trenches had been put into much better shape since our earlier occupancy of them, so that what with our work that night they were by the morning of the seventh in fairly good shape.

The night was not unusual in any way. There was the regular amount of shelling, of star shells, of machine gun and rifle fire, and of course, casualties. Those we always had, be it ever so quiet.

Even the morning "Stand-to" with that mysterious dread of unknown dangers that it invariably brought gave us nothing worse than an hour of chilly waiting—and later, the smoke of the Germans' cooking fires.

There were none for us. It was as simple as algebra. Smoke attracted undue artillery attention—the Germans had artillery; we had not. They had fires; we had not.

The day rolled by smoothly enough. Except for the fresh graves and a certain number of unburied dead the small-pox appearance of the shell-pitted ground about might have been thought to have been of ancient origin; so filled with water were the shell holes and so large had they grown as a result of the constant sloughing in of their sodden banks.

During all these days the German fire on the salient at large had continued as fiercely as before but had spared us its severest trials.

The night of the seventh passed to all outward appearance pretty much in the same manner as the preceding one.

CHAPTER VToC

The Eighth of May and the Last Stand of the Princess Pats

It seemed as though I had just stepped off my whack of sentry go for my group when a kick in the ribs apprised me that it was "Stand-to." I rubbed my eyes, swore and rose to my feet. Such was the narrowness of the trench that the movement put me at my post at the parapet, where in common with my mates, I fell to scanning the top for the first signs of day and the Germans.

The latter lay on the other side of the ravine from us as they had since the Fourth, except for such times as they had assaulted our position. The smoke of Ypres and all the close-packed villages of a thickly populated countryside rose sullenly on every hand.

Over everything there hung the pallor of the mist-ridden Flemish morning, deadly quiet, as was usual at that time of the trench day when the tenseness of the all-night vigil was just merging into the relieving daylight.

At half past six that stillness was punctuated by a single shell, which broke barely in our rear. And then the ball commenced—the most intense bombardment we had yet experienced. Most of the fire came from the batteries in concealed positions on our right, whence, as on the fourth, they poured in a very destructive enfilade fire which swept up and down the length of the trench like the stream of a hose, making it a shambles. Each burst of high-explosive shells, each terrible pulsation of the atmosphere, if it missed the body, seemed to rend the very brain, or else stupefied it.

The general result was beyond any poor words of mine. All spoken language is totally inadequate to describe the shocks and horrors of an intense bombardment. It is not that man himself lacks the imaginative gift of words but that he has not the word tools with which to work. They do not exist. Each attempt to describe becomes near effrontery and demands its own separate apology.

In addition, kind Nature draws a veil for him over so much of all the worst of it that many details are spared his later recollection. He remembers only the indescribable confusion and the bursting claps of near-by flame, as foul in color and as ill of smell as an addled egg. He knows only that the acid of the high-explosive gas eats into the tissue of his brain and lungs, destroying with other things, most memories of the shelling.

Overhead an aeroplane buzzed. We could even descry the figures of the pilot and his observer, the latter signaling. No gun of ours answered. The dead and dying lay all about and none could attend them: A rifle was a rifle.

This continued for an hour, at the end of which time we poked our heads up and saw their infantry coming on in columns of mobs, and some of them also very prettily in the open order we had ourselves been taught. Every field and hedge spewed them up. We stood, head and

It was at this time that we saw the troops on our flanks falling back in orderly fashion. I called that fact to the attention of Lieutenant Lane, who was the only officer left in our vicinity. He said that the last word he had received was to hang on.

This we proceeded to do, and so, we are told, did the others. We learned later that the battalion roll call that night showed a strength of one hundred and fifty men out of the six hundred and thirty-five who had answered "Present" twenty-four hours earlier. And the official records of the Canadian Eye Witness, Lord Beaverbrook, then Sir Max Aitken, as given in "Canada in Flanders," state that "Those who survive and the friends of those who have died may draw solace from the thought that never in the history of arms have soldiers more valiantly sustained the gift and trust of a Lady," referring to the Color which had been worked for and presented to us by the Princess Patricia, daughter of His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught, then Governor-General of Canada.

We were on the apex of the line and were now unsupported on either side. It was about this time, I believe, that a small detachment of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, a sister regiment in our brigade, fetched to the companies in our rear twenty boxes of badly needed ammunition and reënforced the Princess Patricias.

Following the beating off of their infantry attack the Germans gave us a short breathing spell until their machine guns had been trained on our parapet and a school of light field guns dragged up into place. The aeroplane came out again, dropping to within three hundred feet of our trench, and with tiny jets of vari-colored smoke bombs, directed the terribly accurate fire of the enemy guns, already so close to, but so well insured against any harm from us that they attempted no concealment. And the big guns on the right completed the devastation.

This continued for another half hour, at the end of which time there remained intact only one small traverse in the trench, which owed its existence to the fragment of chicken wire that held its sides up. The remainder was absolutely wiped out. This time there was no rapid fire, nor even any looking over the top to see if the enemy were coming on. Instead, the Germans fairly combed the parapet with their machine guns. Each indication of curiosity from us drew forth from them such a stream of fire that the top of the parapet spat forth a steady shower of flying mud, and, which made it impossible for us to defend ourselves properly, even had there been enough of us left to do so.

The rest was chaos, a bit of pure hell. Men struggling, buried alive and looking at us for the aid they would not ask for. Soldiers all. And the Germans now pouring in in waves from all sides, and especially from our unprotected flanks and rear, hindered only by the desultory rifle fire of our two weakened companies in the support trenches. We were receiving rifle fire from four directions and bayonet thrusts from the Germans on the parapet. Mowed down like sheep. And as they came on they trampled our dead and bayoneted our wounded.

The machine-gun crew had gone under to a man, doing their best to the last. I think Sergeant Whitehead went with them, too; at least he was near there a short time before, and I never saw him or any of the gun crew again. The only living soul near that spot was Royston, dragging himself out from under a pile of débris and covered with mud and blood, his face horribly swollen to twice its normal size, blinded for the moment.

To quote "Canada in Flanders" again:

"At this time the bombardment recommenced with great intensity. The German bombardment had been so heavy since May 4th that a wood which the Regiment had used in part for cover was completely demolished. The range of our machine-guns was taken with extreme precision. All, without exception, were buried. Those who served them behaved with the most admirable coolness and gallantry. Two were dug out, mounted and used again. One was actually disinterred three times and kept in action till a shell annihilated the whole section. Corporal Dover stuck to his gun throughout and, although wounded, continued to discharge his duties with as much coolness as if on parade. In the explosion that ended his ill-fated gun, he lost a leg and an arm, and was completely buried in the débris. Conscious or unconscious, he lay there in that condition until dusk, when he crawled out of all that was left of the obliterated trench and moaned for help. Two of his comrades sprang from the support trench—by this time the fire trench—and succeeded in carrying in his mangled and bleeding body. But as all that remained of this brave soldier was being lowered into the trench a bullet put an end to his sufferings. No bullet could put an end to his glory."

George Easton was firing with me at the gray mass of the oncoming horde. "My rifle's jammed!" he cried.

"Take mine." And I stooped to get one from a casualty underfoot. But a moment later, as I fired from the parapet, my bayonet was broken off by a German bullet. I shouted wildly to Cosh to toss me one from near by.

Just then the main body of the Germans swarmed into the end of the trench.

Of this Lord Beaverbrook says: "At this moment the Germans made their third and last attack. It was arrested by rifle fire, although some individuals penetrated into the fire trench on the right. At this point all the Princess Patricias had been killed, so that this part of the trench was actually tenantless. Those who established a footing were few in number, and they were gradually dislodged; and so the third and last attack was routed as successfully as those which had preceded it."

His conclusion that we had all been killed was justifiable even though, fortunately for me, it was an erroneous one. So I am glad for other motives than those of mere courtesy to be able here to set him right.

Bugler Lee shouted to me: "I'm shot through the leg." A couple of us seized him, planning to go down to where the communication trench had once been. But he stopped us, saying: "It's no good, boys. It's a dead end! They're killing us."

Cosh swore. "Don't give up, kid! We'll beat the —— yet!" A German standing a few yards away raised his rifle and blew his head off. Young Brown broke down at this—they had just done in his wounded pal: "Oh, look! Look what they've done to Davie," and fell to weeping. And with that another put the muzzle of his rifle against the boy's head and pulled the trigger.