After many delays, as a consequence of our guide losing his way more than once, and frequent stops to allow stretcher parties to pass, we finally landed dead on our feet from exhaustion in Winnipeg Road where "D" Company was in support for the Battalion. Being in the last section of 16 Platoon I found myself in the extreme funk hole, one to the right. The other boys having, foolishly too, located themselves in the nearest shelters that offered themselves to the community trench -- always a bad place to be as such spots were likely to be registered by enemy artillery.
We got out our ground sheets and plugged them with bullets into the clay above to form a protection from the rain. After much perseverance and pulling huge chunks of mud down on myself, in trying to get in under the rubber sheet, I finally succeeded, slumping into my funk hole in a condition bordering on coma from sheer exhaustion, this being my first trip into the front line trenches. How long I remained there I have no idea, but it seemed only seconds before I came to with the consciousness that something was happening. The most ungodly racket imaginable had broken all around me. It was not quite daylight yet but rifles were snapping, machine guns on both sides hammering, and the ground being continuously shaken with exposing shells, few of which seemed to be striking our immediate locality, but many were passing over our heads and lighting fifty yards behind. This I found out on making an inspection from outside the funk hole. No one else seemed to have moved though, so concluding this was a regular morning strafe which I had often heard about, I eased in to my hole and lit a cigarette. A slight abatement in the shelling about this time assured me that it was all over so I decided to have breakfast. Here I was wrong. The old-timers knew after so severe a strafe that it was just beginning.
Dawn had broken now and the first sight that met my eye right in the bottom of the road below my funk hole was a man laying on his back, a gaping hole in his face and very dead. I hadn't time to gaze. The next thing was someone running away from the road towards Vimy -- and then another jumped into the road right beside me. I called and he stopped in answer to my query. "What's the matter?" "Henie's come over. We'll have to hold him here." By now others were appearing from their funk holes and the front, and we stood to. The first lad who had joined us being an original took charge of our little group.
Shortly after an officer appeared. Later I got to know him as Major John Harmon. How white he looked, but calm and in the face of what he knew to be almost certain death he led us over the top. Fortunately for me and hardly realizing the seriousness of the affair, I quickly made up my mind. If there is going to be a scrap it won't be with all that load of harness on, so I left it and started with only a rifle, a bayonet, and a pocket full of bullets.
continued...
Canadian Expeditionary Force, 19th Battalion - Experiences in WW1
