We had now been out of the line for over a fortnight when we received orders to take over a sector of the line in the apex of the Ypres salient. At 10 pm on September 8th, 1916, we were entrained at the railway station and went for eight miles towards Ypres and there disentrained and marched in the dark, past ruined Ypres to Zillebecke Bund, where we occupied some big dugouts, in the bank of the reservoir, built of curved iron sheets over which were stacked sandbags filled with earth.

These dugouts held about 25 men-each, in perfect safety from shellfire, as we were protected by the high embankments of the reservoir. Inside, they were fitted with bunks for the men to sleep on but they were filthy places and crawled with lice, which we had to endure as we had nowhere else to sleep. The reservoir in times of peace supplied the town of Ypres with water and was situated only about a mile from that place. It covered about ten acres in extent and was surrounded by high embankments on the west side of which were the dugouts in which we were billeted. The surrounding country was low and marshy and covered in long grass and reeds in which frogs lived in paradise and croaked and croaked as if in derision, knowing I suppose, that there were no Frenchmen about to eat them.

The famous Ypres salient was shaped like the thin end of an egg, and was about seven miles from apex to base. Why it was ever maintained as a defensive position, no one knows, unless it was in order to protect the town of Ypres around which it curved, as it was a death trap from a military point of view, and the Germans could shell the defenders from front, sides and rear if they chose. In addition, the whole country was low lying and boggy and the trenches were terribly expensive, both in life and material, to maintain. In fact, it will always be a puzzle to most of the troops why it was not abandoned.

For the first seven days in the salient, the 20th Battalion was held in reserve to the 18th Battalion who occupied the front line and we did nothing but fatigue work. Every night, the companies were detailed off into various working parties, and were then marched up the duckboard tracks to the neighbourhood of the front line where work was done until morning. The first night, I was detailed to a working party under an Engineer corporal carrying timber from the “Canadian” dump, across to Hill 60 where the tunnellers and miners were engaged in mining operations. The next night, our company was marched into the front line in the apex or tip of the salient and were there put on digging a sap called “Cross Street” which was intended to be a link between two trenches.

As it was nearly full moon and only about sixty yards from the German outposts, the job was rather ticklish. We crawled out, one after another to the number of about twenty in all and spread out at intervals of two yards, thus spanning the distance which was only about fifty yards and then dug for our lives with our shovels. We had dug about 2 ft. in the soft soil before the Germans sighted us and put a machine gun onto us. But we had enough cover to protect us by now, so just allowed the Germans to waste their ammunition and dug between the spasms, until we reached a depth of about five feet or so, when we could afford to take a spell. The salient was simply bristling with machine guns which were fired at us from all quarters, so that we never knew whether the bullets which hissed past us were ours or theirs, and it made fatigue work very nervy at night as the Germans had studied every point in the salient and had it fired upon at night with indirect machine gunfire.

One night we were all engaged in carrying timber in Indian file along a metalled road when suddenly a machine gun rattled and a shower of sparks flew from the road where the bullets had struck the metal, as the gun was traversed and the marvel is that we were not all hit in the legs as we walked along. Having safely eluded this effort to kill us, we delivered our timber at the entrance to the tunnel at Hill 60 and were just leaving for a second load when the Huns hurled a large Minnenwerfer within 50 paces of us. It burst with a tremendous flash and roar and hurled bucketfuls of mud into the air, which mostly fell on us. We evacuated the spot in double time in case there were any more where that one came from.

During the fourth night, our company was employed in trench digging again in the vicinity of the front line. This time we were on a trench called “Crab Crawl” and our line went right over the crest of a low hill towards the Hun line. Those who were on the reverse slope were safe enough, but the men who were on the crest and forward slope were in an undesirable position and before we had dug to the required depth, we had lost three men wounded from the incessant machine gun fire which came from all directions towards us, sweeping the unprotected ground but firing at nothing in particular.

Seven days and nights passed, during which we worked all night on various fatigue duties, such as digging and carrying and draining trenches and sleeping all day in our vermin infested dugouts at Zillebeke Bund at the base of the salient, two kilometres or so from the apex of the salient. Then it became our turn to do a week in the front line. Our company therefore went to the front line and took over from a company of the 18th Battalion who changed into our dugouts at the “Bund.” No. 10 Platoon under Lt. Day took over Posts 1 to 4 in Cross St. trench which we had ourselves dug only five nights before, and Harold Mitchell and I with four others occupied No.1 post, which was only 50 yards from the German outpost line. The first night of our seven was very quiet indeed and taking it in turns to do sentry duty on the fire step, we passed the night quietly listening to the sounds which came from the German trenches.

Evidently the Germans opposite us took things very calmly as we could hear sounds of singing and concertinas playing. It was generally safe to surmise that if we had a comfortable trench the Germans would have absolute luxury and in this case I think we were correct in thinking so, as we could hear sounds of timber being sawed up and hammers being used as if they were engaged in building their “little grey home in the west.” On several occasions we heard fowls cackling and ducks quacking, while some of the men swore that they heard a cow lowing in the early morning, so that we jumped to the conclusion that they must have had a small farmyard in one of their big dugouts in their lines.

There was very little artillery fire about the salient, with the exception of the 18 pounders of which we had several batteries and most of the harassing fire was done with trench mortars and aerial torpedoes and rifle grenades, with which we annoyed one another at intervals during the night and day. Compared with the battle of Pozieres, the garrisoning of the Ypres salient was a real caretakers job. We slept on our posts in the day time and most of the night, being ready at a moments notice to repel a raid of course. All night long, right round the salient, the Germans kept sending up their flares to illuminate the area called No Man’s Land. In fact, they were so particular on this point and possessed such excellent flares, that we hardly ever bothered to send one up at all, except when he failed to be regular with them. If we thought there was too long an interval between his flares, we would imagine that he had some reason for not illuminating the trenches, so that we would fire one of our apologies for flares, to see what he was doing. There is no doubt that the Germans were past masters at the art of flare firing and especially when he had the wind up, he would treat us to a magnificent firework display and would send up flares in quick succession for half an hour or so, of every colour imaginable. Besides his ordinary white lights, he had green, red and purple parachute flares, bunches of grapes, pom poms and golden rain, all of which meant some particular pre-arranged signals but which nevertheless were quite pretty to watch.

The first day on this post was very quiet, scarcely a shot being fired at us, followed by an equally quiet night. The next day, he must have discovered our presence, as he systematically bombed our portion of trench with pineapple trench mortars and rifle grenades which would leave his trenches with a sharp pop! and within a few seconds would fall on our parapets and about our post with a thud and a bang! hurling dirt into our trench which we had to bear all day long, as we had nothing with which to retaliate. He kept this kind of thing going for two more days without causing us any casualties on our post, whilst he also pasted other parts of our line with his aerial torpedoes and “oil drums” which we could see tumbling over and over, high above us, to burst with a terrific rending crash, causing great havoc to our trenches without hurting anybody. On the afternoon of the fifth day, it rained heavily and soon made a boggy morass in our trench in which we had to stand up to our knees, causing us great discomfort, as it was now impossible to lie down in the bottom of the trench, and forcing us to sit on the fire step with our legs in the slush for the remainder of our term in the front lined The same night, he suddenly made a raid on our posts with stick bombs and for five minutes we kept up a stiff fusillade of mills grenades until the Hun patrol was driven off. One Hun lost his way in the confusion and fell into our trenches a few yards further up from our posts where he was immediately pounced on by “Darky” Pickens, a half caste private in our company, who unmercifully kicked him and pummelled him until he surrendered and he was led, badly wounded to head-quarters where he was acclaimed as a valuable means of identification as to what Division of Germans were in the line opposite to us.

After this little raid, the rest of the night passed off without incident worth recording. The next day, we worked hard to relieve our trench of some of the water, but found the task impossible so had to put up with the inconvenience. The sixth night came and everything was quiet until midnight when suddenly a corporal rushed down to our post and told us to stand to, as the Germans had managed to get a patrol through our outpost line and were between our post and our next trench. This rather startled us as it meant we were likely to be attached in our front and rear and we had to watch both sides with bombs in our hands, expecting every moment to be attacked, but after half an hour, the alarm turned out to be false, as a patrol of our men had been over the ground and had seen no trace of the enemy. However, the fright we received was sufficient to make us keep a strict look out on all sides until morning, and our nerves being highly strung, any little thing that happened was sufficient to make us seize our bombs and wait in tense expectation, with our eyes staring out of their sockets, trying to pierce the darkness, until the cause of it all would turn out to be a rat chasing its mate through the grass or something equally silly.

At 10 o’clock, in the evening of the 7th night on this post we were relieved by the 18th Battalion and our company went back to the dugouts in Zillebeke Bund which we had previously occupied. There we remained for another week, sleeping all day and working all night on fatigue jobs of all descriptions. One night we were carrying duckboards, another it was engineers carrying party to Hill 60 or rations to the front line and so on. It was nervous work for us to walk about the roads and tracks at night in the salient since the Germans literally swept every inch of the ground every night with their indirect machine gun fire and there was a constant “zip-zip” of bullets in every direction and the marvel is that more of us were not hit.

We had now been three weeks without a change of clothing and had been occupying the lice infested dug outs and trenches all the while, so that we were all literally crawling with vermin. They worried the life out of us, and occupied all our spare time in delousing ourselves, which operation the boys called “Chatting” oneself. We often caught twenty or thirty every few hours in the seams of our shirts and breeches and the irritation of the skin they caused was very uncomfortable. They were extremely hard to be rid of as they simply thrived on insecticide and other insect powders and revelled in a scalding hot bath of water, whilst their favourite home was in the chemicals of our gas helmets and what is more, they were everywhere. They were in the wood of the dugouts, in the straw in our billets and the wood in the railway trucks and systematically bred up and transferred themselves from one person to another during the hours of sleep and we found that it was simply impossible under active service conditions to get rid of them. Even the Colonel and the Doctor were victims so there is an excuse for the lowly private when such exalted persons were infested.

The Ypres salient being in low lying country and marshy in most places, it was very hard to build trenches that would stand wet weather. When we dug a trench, it had to be revetted with hurdles and “A” frames to keep the sides from falling in, while duckboards had to be used in the bottoms of the trenches to keep us out of the water which soon accumulated, necessitating constant draining and pumping. This was all very expensive and I figured out that it cost quite 10/- per yard, and as there were miles and miles of this kind of trench similarly built, the total cost must have run into millions of pounds. Perhaps this is the reason why there was no attempt on either side to advance in the quiet unimportant sectors. If they were constantly advancing a mile or so every now and then it would mean that new trenches would have to be built and revetted and lined and duckboarded over and over again, so that both sides were content to remain where they were and bombard one another with aerial torpedoes and trench mortars etc. rather than shift.

The Ypres salient was dotted with little cemeteries, some holding a hundred graves and some more or less. In one spot, is a big shell hole in which lie buried fourteen comrades of a Canadian battalion who sleep in a semicircle each with a little wooden cross at his head, showing his name, regiment and date of being killed in action. They were all killed with the one shell so the epitaph says (R.I.P.). There were thousands of bodies also which never received a decent burial, as earlier in the war, the Ypres salient was the scene of several terrific battles for the possession of Ypres and it contains the remains of soldiers of almost every regiment in the British Army.

After spending the third week in the Ypres salient in reserve at the Zillebeke Bund, as I said, doing fatigue work, we, C company, were moved up into close support our other three companies taking over the firing line. The week that followed was a little more exciting than the three previous weeks, as on the second evening the Huns were treated to a good solid tickling up all round the salient, and on our right and left and front, for two hours, his line was solidly bombarded with trench mortars and light artillery.

Next night, the 18th Battalion made a raid on the portion of trench opposite Cross St., evidently in return for the one they had attempted on our post a fortnight previous, which turned out to be a failure, as they never even entered the German trenches The Germans retaliated by bombarding our supports with whizz bangs all the next day but as we kept well out of sight in our little funk holes in the bottom of our trenches we never suffered a casualty. The same night, our artillery heavily bombarded the line opposite the 19th Battalion, which was followed up by a raid by the 19th battalion, which was also a failure for although they succeeded in entering the German trenches, they found them evacuated and they did not secure anything to identify the enemy by. Every night as performed some class of work, such as duck board carrying or salvaging, repairing trenches, draining trenches etc. whilst during the day, we mostly slept.

One day I obtained permission to go into ruined Ypres for the purpose of procuring some goods from the canteen there. After about 1½ hrs. walk down the duck board tracks past Zillebeke Bund and down the railway line, I reached the town, which was nothing but a pile of bricks and dust, it having been bombarded on several occasions until not a house or building remained whole. Although the town was only a heap of ruins, a large number of assorted troops were in occupation of the place, using the underground cellars as billets and offices. I asked a Tommy private where there was a canteen and he directed me to an old church, in the vaults under which, the canteen was doing a roaring trade. I then pushed my way in and purchased about a pounds worth of groceries and set out to return to the support line from which I had only obtained three hours leave of absence.

On the way back I passed the ruined Cloth Hall of Ypres which, judging by what was then left of it, must have been a magnificent structure before it was destroyed. Near it was the remains of a magnificent Cathedral, which was battered to bits. Ypres, at one time, was very prosperous town of over 50,000 inhabitants and the inhabitants were as a whole wealthy and well to do and lived in very fine houses. It contained amongst other big buildings, a very large barracks which was very old and where, the Belgian cavalry were stationed before the war. The walls were quite 6 ft. thick and were built of stone and brick, and on one occasion our 5th Brigade used the place as a billet for a few days.

The town contained a kind of fortress, surrounded by a brick wall six feet thick, skirted by a moat. The two main roads to Menin and Lille passed through this wall through the two gates known as Lille gate and Menin gate. The walls were also tunnelled and in these tunnels troops were billeted, but as they were very damp and vermin infested, they were not considered very comfortable though they were safe, as no shell could penetrate the walls. I had occasion to visit the rest of the town and it was absolutely blown to smithereens and hardly a wall stood, and the rubbish contained much valuable salvage, and I believe it would pay to collect the brass, lead and marble, etc. with which the roads were strewn.

Leaving the town on my return to the support line, I followed the old railway line as far as Zillebeke Bund, and then took to the duck board tracks. Presently, I found myself in the midst of a miniature barrage, as the Germans observing from the heights of Hill 60, seeing a good deal of movement, suddenly opened up on the duckboards. For five minutes, I ran for my life, being chased by salvos from the German guns, until at last I reached the safety of a breastwork in an old trench, and there waited until he had finished amusing himself. Then I got into the communication trench leading to the supports and there I arrived about an hour later with a bagful of groceries from the canteen and a whole skin, for which I was truly thankful.

The last night of our tour of duty in the support line, we were reinforced by our 12th reinforcements, plus a few details from hospital, who being added to the present strength of the battalion, made it fairly strong again.