in october, 1917, orders came to join in the big push on the flanders front in what proved a vain attempt to cut the enemy lines of communication with the belgian coast held by the germans and used as a resort for submarines. the canadians were asked to take passchendaele ridge which rose abruptly about 300 feet above the miles of mud flats its guns dominated. these muddy fields had been captured by australians and new zealanders after desperate fighting, but it was almost impossible to hold them without terrible punishment from the concentrated german artillery fire, bombing, and machine-gunning because of the enemy's position on the ridge. no trenches could be made in the mud for the sides would slip back in, and there was practically no protection for our men outside the few small concrete blockhouses or "pill boxes" the huns had built. so we had either to withdraw or go on and chase the enemy off the ridge.
the 9th brigade of the famous third canadian division was chosen for the post of honour. this was the task of capturing the almost unassailable german positions on bellevue spur which was a part of the passchendaele heights lying immediately in front of us. of the brigade, the 43rd battalion (the "camerons" of winnipeg) and 58th were to make the attack, with the 52nd in close support. the 116th, junior battalion of the brigade, was employed as a labour battalion, and a dirty, dangerous job they had, "packing" ammunition and "duck-walks" at night through the mud up to the attack area, doing pick-and-shovel work, and afterwards carrying back wounded men under shell-fire.
friday, october 26th, was the fateful day. someone suggested that friday was unlucky and 26 was twice 13, but this was countered by the seven letters in october and the lucky number at the end of 1917! it wasn't luck in sevens or thirteens that won the battle, but simply that we had men and officers with an unyielding determination to carry on in spite of all obstacles, unless wounded or killed, until their objective was gained. contributing causes there were in training, equipment, and leadership that helped our men to do the impossible, but the deciding factor, the real cause of victory, lay in the brave hearts of the soldiers who faced the spur that chill october morning.
the ground had been reconnoitred by lt.-col. grassie, our o.c., who had to leave for canada before the attack took place. our operations were carried out under the skilful direction of major chandler.
in one of my old note-books i find a description of the affair scribbled oct. 27th during a leisure moment in waterloo pill-box. "from banks farm we moved up to within striking distance of bellevue spur taking over from a battalion of wellington new zealanders. headquarters occupied the concrete blockhouse near the foot of the spur and about 400 yards away from the enemy lines. we were under direct machine-gun fire and sniping from their posts on the crest of the hill we had to capture. our blockhouse was continually shelled. the enemy guns had its location to a nicety and kept it under almost constant fire. twelve men in all were killed at the door at different times during the few days we stayed there.
"in the attack yesterday morning, fifty of our men in the centre were able to make and hold their objective, but the battalion on our right was forced to fall back to the edge of the hill after being exposed to a fire which cut it down to ineffective strength. one of our companies on the left ran into a murderous fire from a group of german posts opposed to them. we withdrew to the brow of the hill and sent word back for re-inforcements. our centre still held but their position was precarious and before nightfall would have become untenable if these germans to their left were not dislodged. the 52nd were ordered to reinforce our left wing and renew the attack. this time we were successful, 150 prisoners were captured in half-an-hour and the whole front cleared. the 58th were enabled to advance and we had no further trouble in consolidating our position."
two v.c's were won that day. bobby shankland, a subaltern in the 43rd, under enemy observation with its consequent machine-gun and rifle fire, made the trip from one of our advanced platoons back to battalion headquarters and out to his men again. he brought accurate information at a critical time when prompt action properly directed meant victory; the lack of it meant defeat. the renewed attack on the left wing with the definite objective he advised saved the day for us. he was recommended for the highest award and it was duly awarded him. lt. o'kelly of the 52nd won the coveted honor by the gallant and effective way in which, regardless of personal risk, he led a company of the 52nd against a group of pill-boxes filled with machine-gunners.
many other gallant deeds were done on the hill that day of which there was no one left to tell.
during this time a stream of wounded had been coming back past waterloo pill-box where our battalion medical aid post was at work. the floor of the blockhouse was a foot deep in mud and water. the stretchers were almost submerged and the back of the man was almost always in the water. at times the stretcher-cases were lying in three rows outside in the cold, the rain, and the mud. there they were constantly in danger of death from shelling. twice shells burst among them, killing and wounding again a dozen men on each occasion. half the cases never got into the dressing station. they were given a look-over, fixed up as well as we could, and sent hobbling off over the "duck-walks" to safer areas farther back. only the most severe cases were held for the attention of the overworked m.o. the long stretcher journeys to the rear were terrible experiences for both bearers and wounded. they had to pass through shelling, gas, and bombing. the carrying parties often became stretcher cases themselves on the way back, and the wounded in that rough journey must have suffered tortures of both mind and body.
the outstanding memory of it all is that of the mud. it would seem impossible for a sensible man to develop a bitter hatred towards an inanimate and apparently harmless thing like mud. but it was "the very devil" to our minds. we walked in it for endless miles. it held our feet and wore us out. if you fell sideways you would probably break or sprain your ankle. we sat down in the mud, slept in it, fought in it. it clogged our rifles and machine-guns. we cursed it with intensity. we ate rations that tasted of mud, wore clothes that were loaded with it, carried with aching muscles stretchers and wounded that were made heavy with mud. many wounded were lost in it, and many of our dead, that we never found, were swallowed by it. hindenburg in his memoirs considers passchendaele the most terrible affair his armies had anywhere engaged in. it was bad for them but it was worse for us attacking, and the thing that made conditions almost unbearable for both sides was that omnipresent vampire of those rain-soaked flanders' fields.
on the 28th we were relieved and moved back and, in a day or two, found ourselves in tents in the mud of a ploughed field near nine elms back of poperinghe. we had done nobly, so they told us, added fresh laurels to our fine record, fought a fight and won a victory, the praises of which would resound throughout the empire. needless to say we were glad we had not failed but for all that there was much unspoken sorrow in the men's hearts. so many of our comrades had been killed. what a remnant our 100 men looked when the battalion paraded to hear some fine words of heartsome praise from our brigade commander, gen. hill.
on the sunday morning we had a parade service. it lasted altogether only fifteen minutes. it was a prayer for the mourners at home, a hymn of thanksgiving, and a word of cheer to ourselves. towards evening sergt-major lowe told me that some of the men wanted me to come over and talk to them. in one of the tents, i found thirty or so crowded in to hear a story of the yukon, and in the tents close around others were listening as i talked. we were all in a serious mood, and somehow the consciousness of this influenced me, that night, to weave my stories into a message in which there would be comfort and cheer for men who had been hard hit, and had faced in roughest form the stern realities of life, and death, and suffering. there was help in it, i know, because i spoke of jesus of nazareth. when you want to minister to men in such times, don't your thoughts just naturally turn to the man of nazareth? so i spoke of him and clothed my message in klondike phrases and imagery. here it is very much as i gave it that evening at nine elms.
* * * * *
we are all feeling a little bit down these days. the savagery of war and our heavy losses in men we knew and loved has stirred deep thoughts in us, grave inner questionings why these things should be, perplexing difficulties about the meaning of life and the power of death, the reason of suffering and the goodness of a god who permits it, criticisms of a social order, nominally christian, which produces the barbarities we have witnessed and taken part in. we are groping for light like the blind, and wishing we could find a sure guide in our thinking on these tangled problems, in whose solution we might find satisfaction and assurance.
there is one song of all our soldier-songs that i think will live and that is the one where we sing of "a long, long trail a-winding into the land of our dreams." there's something true to experience about the thought of the long road of life. it takes me back to old trail days in the north, and i picture the long, long, trail of life winding its way from out of the mists of the past, through pleasant valleys and over windswept mountain summits, on and on into the unexplored land of the future. my message is simple enough. it is an appeal straight from your padre's heart that in your sorrow and uncertainty you decide to take jesus of nazareth as your guide down the trail of life for all the days that are to come. i ask you to follow him because he is the very guide you need to find the right trail and keep it under your feet to the end. life is all we've got and it is therefore too precious to risk in any unnecessary way. it is so important that we find and keep the right trail and save our lives from spiritual death, we cannot afford to accept any guide who has not the very finest credentials. what are the credentials of christ when he offers himself as our guide? they may be spoken of in many ways, but i am going reverently to put him to the three tests any guide in the yukon would have to face before he could qualify to lead anyone on a mid-winter trip into new country over an unknown trail beset with dangers.
but before i can get to this examination of his credentials i know many of you are mentally stumbling over difficulties you have with or about the bible. it has been said with much truth that "the bible has kept many an earnest man from christ." it is not going to do it with you if i can prevent it. i have heard you wondering about the truth of the garden of eden story, about a god who hardened pharaoh's heart so that he could slay the first-born of all the egyptians, the story of jonah and the fish, the difficulties of accepting biblical science and history, the miracles, and such like things, and when you all have given your special stumbling-blocks i could probably add some of mine that you hadn't thought of. i am not going to attempt just now to deny or remove any of these particular difficulties but show you a way round them, a right way of approach to the bible, so that instead of keeping you from christ it can fulfill its divine mission of revealing him.
i had a partner with me for one winter in my log-cabin at gold bottom, way in the klondike hills. his name was jack crowe, a nova scotian, who had come out from dawson to teach the little school we had started for the dozen children on the creek. we took turns at cooking. one winter morning, the mercury clear out of sight in the bulb of our thermometer, it was my turn to get out and light the fire and make breakfast. this consisted principally of oatmeal porridge, bacon, bread of our own make, and coffee. there were two big bowls of porridge with nothing left in the pot. we sat down, asked a blessing, and commenced our breakfast. the first spoonful i took my teeth struck on something hard. it wasn't porridge and i took it out of my mouth. it was a button. what did i do? throw my bowlful of porridge away and do without half a breakfast on account of that button which i couldn't swallow? no, i did just what you or any other ordinary man would have done. i placed the button beside my plate and ate the porridge with relish, and i think if there had been twenty-five buttons in that porridge i'd have done the same, an odd button or two out of place wasn't going to deprive me of my needed breakfast. fifty below zero makes you too hungry to be fastidious. further, let me take you into my confidence, i found the place where that button belonged before the day was over, sewed it on, and it did good service.
of course you see my point. i don't blink the difficulties in our thinking about the bible. they exist. most of them can be explained when we study the subject a bit, some few are still half-solved puzzles to me which i enjoy working at when i have leisure, and some i suppose i shall never quite see through; but just let us lay them all aside for the time being and go straight to bed-rock and see if there is gold in the claim of christ himself. you know, by the way, it is strange how what at one time we thought useless material in the bible finds its place as we gain more experience of life. when i was very young the psalms seemed almost meaningless. now some of them voice the deepest longings of my soul for i have learned the bitterness of life as well as its sweetness. the minor prophets at the end of the old testament seemed to be "cumberers of the ground" until i learned something of the crookedness of present day politics, the prevalence of the cancer of sanctimonious hypocrisy, and the power of mammon-worship to obstruct social reforms long overdue. then it seemed that a book like amos was not only up-to-date, but far ahead of us. there are passages in the fifth chapter that should be painted in giant letters on the walls of legislatures, in halls of justice, in the market-place, and above the pulpits of christendom.
but leave your lesser problems unsolved for the time and get the first, biggest question settled as to the validity of christ's claim to be able to guide us safely through life.
in the old stampede days up there, and it's the same still, the first qualification demanded in a guide was that he should know the trail. it was impossible to talk business on any other basis. every other virtue your would-be guide possessed would be useless without that essential one. christ is prepared to stand that test, make it as "acid" as you like. how can we test him when we do not ourselves know the way? we all have a god-given intuition by which we can tell that the direction the guide would have us go is right or wrong. even a canadian who had never been in scotland and wanted to go there would have "horse-sense" enough not to follow a man who offered to take him to edinburgh by going five thousand miles due west from halifax.
so with christ. he asks no blind faith or sanctified superstition. what direction would he lead us? what is the great burden of his message accepted by all christian churches down underneath the load of dogma, form and ceremony? where would he lead us if we followed him? the road is marked by two parallel lines, the eternal boundaries of the christ trail, on the one side it is heart-righteousness and on the other brotherly kindness; and to show us what he meant, he walked that trail himself his life through. it's a great thing to have a guide who knows the trail not only "on the map" but has been over every bit of it and knows it perfectly. he shows by his own life just what he means, the heart right as his was right, and a brotherly-kindness that gladly lays down its life to help others. doesn't it seem to you to be the right direction, the right trail, the right guide?
this seems to me like trying to prove an axiom. you can't prove it by process of logic. to state it is to prove it. we know by intuition it is right and it is the only trail. take the fundamental need of heart-rightness. it is the heart of man in which evil dwells. the cruel ambition that permitted this war originated in the hearts of a group of men. the greed for money that refuses to permit social iniquities to be removed has its habitation in men's hearts. the whole horrid brood whose mother is selfishness exists only in men's hearts. "out of the heart" christ said, evil comes. cleanse the heart and you clean the world. but you can't have your heart right the way christ teaches unless you have a place in it for your brother. a christian must be and will be deeply interested in social reform. you can't follow christ and forget your brother, for the trail of christ is the trail of self-sacrifice for others. christ then knows the right trail which would lead you and me and the whole world unto a happier, sweeter day. i know no other way that so completely satisfies my sense of what is right and true as the way of christ.
the second test of the worth of a guide, after i was satisfied that he knew the way, was whether he was able and willing to help me when i got into difficulties in hard places. the trail leads dizzily round the mountain side with a precipice below. i'm a tenderfoot. i have neither the nerve nor skill to take my dogs and my sleigh safely past. i'd fall to my death surely if i attempt it. he tells me it's the only way through, and he is right. i say i can't make it. he replies that all he offered to do was to lead along the right trail. it is up to me to follow. or the mountain climb is so steep and the snow so deep that i haven't strength for it. again i appeal to this imaginary guide. he says it is not his business to do anything more than walk ahead and show me the way. but i can't follow him and i know to camp on the mountain-side means death. no matter what perfect knowledge such a guide would have it would mean tragedy for me unless he had more than knowledge. but there is no guide, white, eskimo, or siwash, that i have ever met would act that way. he would take his own dogs round the mountain then come back and, with expert strength, take me safely past the danger. he would help me somehow to make the steep grade.
so on the trail of life there are the towering mountains of sin. they lie across the right trail in every man's life. we are all sinners. you remember how christ once dispersed a mob. he said, "let him that is without sin cast the first stone," and while he wrote on the ground they all took the chance, as we would have done, to sneak away self-condemned. well, no man can cleanse his own heart of sin and yet no true man can rest content in sin. it must be done and no human power can do it. if we are to get past the mountains of our sins, and we must get past them or die, then our guide must be able to get us over. that's why we need a saviour. it meant gethsemane and calvary to him. it is the atonement, and whatever varying interpretations it may have, it must ever mean that the guide is also a saviour. he is getting us safe across to the god-ward side of our sins. they are no longer in our way if we will but give ourselves to him to take us over. no longer are they a barrier between ourselves and god as we journey on. before we reach the land of gold which we pilgrims are seeking, we also come to the dark valley and mystery of death. can he find a safe way for our feet in the darkness? will he leave us to follow when we cannot see him? not he. he found his own way safely through—that's the meaning of his empty tomb—and he guarantees to hold us securely in that strange experience at the end of the trail till, going on, we make through the fog into the land beyond, and see the golden city of god. our guide is stronger than sin and death.
there is another test. my guide must not only know the trail and be able to get me through safely but he must be one with whom i can talk. men used to go crazy in the north through sheer loneliness. days alone on the trail with your dogs amid the deep silences of the sub-arctics makes you hungry for conversation with some other human being. i have turned ten miles out of my way on a heavy trail simply to get to some trapper or prospector where i might hear "the sweet music of speech." i remember having as a guide on a three weeks trip to the lightning creek camp an indian who was of the conventional silent type. he knew the trail and his duties perfectly. i had only one fault to find with him. he wouldn't or couldn't chat with me in either english or chinook. i paid him off at lightning. i couldn't stand it any longer. i hired another man for the return trip, not such a capable guide, but one with whom i could have a little chat around the camp fire in the evenings.
it is just like that on the trail of life. many times we ache to unburden our hearts to someone who will hear and understand and speak comforting words to us. our dearest earthly friends can't quite enter into the intimate sanctuaries of a man's life. there are many lonely places on our journey when heart and soul cry out for that companionship that none can give but jesus of nazareth. "comfortable words he speaketh, while his hands uphold and guide."
he is my guide and i cannot do without him. i would lose my life in the wilderness if he should leave me to fend for myself. i have utter confidence in him. as i come to know him better my faith grows stronger. at the end of the trail, if i have time to think, i shall have many regrets as i look back, but i know there is one thing i shall never regret and that is that long ago i placed myself in the hands of jesus christ for good and all.
so long thy power hath blest me,
sure it still will lead me on,
o'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent,
till the night is gone.
