Original Letter
France
1•10•17.
My Dearest Maidie:–
I was properly up with the hens this morning at 4:45 and have never closed an eye since. Of course its only two in the afternoon yet so I might grab a little sleep before the day is finished yet. The world – so much of it as I could see – looked very odd and queer at 4.45 a.m. All around us ordinarily is clay hard baked by the sun and wind Tos’morning it was just like café au lait, it had rained during the night and it was like porridge. My place is on the steep side of a hill and I almost slid all the way down. It was like coming home to you from Camp when you lived in Hammer. Slipping down the hill was like it. The rats had a beautiful party in our dugout last night. Four of us sleep here. Turkey, Miller, and a Runner – Larry Powers. The ends of the dugout are made of sand bags very old and rotten and the rats tore up and down the ends and loosened pecks of earth. Larry had his bed right against one end and was nearly buried alive. This is the first place we have had any rats and I think that I don’t like them – in fact I am damn sure I don’t. Do you want to know if I love you to-day, Dear? Because I do more than ever, I do believe. Its something big today. This morning I was recalling things that happened when we were together and I wondered how I was ever able to let you out of my arms that night we met in Louviers. I really wanted to hold you forever, you know, why didn’t I. Will you give me a little kiss, please Your own Ross
Larry Powers
- About Lawrence Power
- Larry, as Ross mentions the first time he writes about him, is the runner for the 50th Bn. Although Ross refers to him as Larry Powers (with an s), according to the attestation papers, this man's surname was Power.
Does anyone have any more information about Larry Power?
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Louviers
- Note
- A town in France (in a region known as Haute-Normandie — Upper Normandy — which also includes Rouen) where Ross spent his two-week leave with Mary prior to his transfer to the front.
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Turkey
- About Sergeant Lawson Turcotte
- A fellow NCO in Ross’s battalion. Of all the men in the battalion, Turkey seems to have been the one Ross worked with most closely in the course of his duties.
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Hammer
- Note
- "Hammer" may refer to Hammer Bay in the Muskoka region of Ontario (prime Canadian “cottage country”), but this has not been confirmed.
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dugout
- Note
- A dugout is a shelter constructed, as the name suggests, by digging a hole—either into a hillside (as pictured in the first image below), into the side of an existing trench, or simply in the ground. From Ross’s letters one gets the impression that battalion headquarters was often in a dugout—and, consistent with this, the Spartacus Educational web page (“Dugouts,” see link below) maintains that large dugouts in the side of communication trenches often served both as battalion headquarters and officers’ sleeping quarters.
To understand the conditions in which Ross was working and fighting, it is necessary to understand the basics of trench warfare, which The New Encyclopaedia Britannica describes as:...warfare in which opposing armed forces attack, counterattack, and defend from relatively permanent systems of trenches dug into the ground. The opposing systems of trenches are usually close to one another. Trench warfare is resorted to when the superior firepower of the defense compels the opposing forces to “dig in” so extensively as to sacrifice their mobility in order to gain protection.
... In making a trench, soil from the excavation is used to create raised parapets running both in front of and behind the trench. Within the trench are firing positions along a raised forward step called a fire step, and duckboards are placed on the often muddy bottom of the trench to provide secure footing.
...
Trench warfare reached its highest development on the Western Front during World War I (1914–18), when armies of millions of men faced each other in a line of trenches extending from the Belgian coast through northeastern France to Switzerland. These trenches arose within the first few months of the war’s outbreak, after the great offensives launched by Germany and France had shattered against the deadly, withering fire of the machine gun and the rapid-firing artillery piece. The sheer quantity of bullets and shells flying through the air in the battle conditions of that war compelled soldiers to burrow into the soil to obtain shelter and survive.
The typical trench system in World War I consisted of a series of two, three, four, or more trench lines running parallel to each other and being at least 1 mile (1.6 km) in depth [sic]. Each trench was dug in a type of zigzag so that no enemy, standing at one end, could fire for more than a few yards down its length. Each of the main lines of trenches was connected to each other and to the rear by a series of communications trenches that were dug roughly perpendicular to them. Food, ammunition, fresh troops, mail, and orders were delivered through these trenches. The intricate network of trenches contained command posts, forward supply dumps, first-aid stations, kitchens, and latrines. Most importantly, it had machine -gun emplacements to defend against an assault, and it had dugouts deep enough to shelter large number of defending troops during an enemy bombardment.
In practice trench warfare was problematic. Not only did “digging in” mean a key tactical sacrifice of mobility, but conditions in the trenches, particularly for the Allies who were forced to occupy lower ground, were appalling. The constant wet meant constant discomfort at best and at worst led to serious conditions such as trench foot, a form of frostbite caused by chronic exposure to cold, which if left untreated progressed to gangrene, sometimes necessitating amputation (Encyclopedia Americana). Sanitation was also a problem, and garbage and human waste building up in and near the trenches contributed to the spread of disease and to generally foul and unpleasant conditions. (See note on “rats” with the letter of October 1, 1917.)
See photos (below - click on photos to enlarge):
1. Military dugout behind the lines, France; 1917; watercolour: brown, black and blue wash over pencil; artist: William Redver Stark, 1885–1953; source: W.R. Stark/Library and Archives Canada.
2. Communication Trench. 22nd Infantry Battalion (French Canadian). July, 1916; source: Canada. Dept. of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada/PA-000395.
3. On sentry duty in a front-line trench, Sept. 1916, France; source: W.I. Castle/Canada. Dept. of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada/PA-000568.
4. An aerial reconnaissance photograph of the opposing trenches and no-man's land between Loos and Hulluch in Artois, France, taken at 7.15 pm, 22 July 1917. German trenches are at the right and bottom, British trenches are at the top left. The vertical line to the left of centre indicates the course of a pre-war road or track; source: Imperial War Museum, catalogue number Q 45786
5. A trench on the Canadian front showing "funk holes," 1917, France; source: W.I. Castle/Canada. Dept. of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada/PA-001326.
6. A British trench near the Albert-Bapaume road at Ovillers-la-Boisselle, July 1916 during the Battle of the Somme. The men are from A Company, 11th Battalion, The Cheshire Regiment; photographer: Lt. J.W. Brooke; source: Imperial War Museum catalogue number Q 3990. Used by permission PD-BritishGov.
7. Bombing down a trench (8th Infantry Battalion). June, 1916; source: Canada. Dept. of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada/PA-000136
8. First World War Soldier with Trench Foot (No Doubt a Canadian), France, 1917. This photo shows an extreme case of trench foot; source: Library and Archives Canada/PA-149311.
9. Report by Colonel G.L. Foster, Surgeon General, Regarding Soldiers Suffering from Trench Foot, November 11, 1915. This report about the occurrence of trench foot among the ranks and the prevention of this problem shows how significant this medical condition was in the eyes of military authorities; source: Library and Archives Canada/RG9 III-B-2, vol. 3615, file 25/7/1-25/7/6.
10. Document by Surgeon General Regarding Vincent's Angina, ca. 1917. This document describes the problem of Vincent's Angina and its chief causes, namely, the failure to disinfect eating and drinking utensils and the sharing of pipes or cigarettes. Life in the trenches made soldiers especially susceptible to this type of problem since it was impossible, under such conditions, to wash dishes or obtain other tobacco products; source: Library and Archives Canada/RG9 III-B-2, vol. 3615, file 25/4/2-25/6/2.
Sources: “The Trench System,” Spartacus Educational website, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWtrenchsystem.htm, accessed 11 February 2009; “Trench Warfare,” The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. II, Micropedia Ready Reference, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2005); “Trench Foot” and “Trench Warfare,” The Encyclopedia Americana, International Edition, vol. 27 (Danbury, CT: Grolier, Inc., 2001); “Dugouts,” Spartacus Educational, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWdugouts.htm, accessed 7 October 2008; “Trench Warfare,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_warfare, accessed 7 October 2008. - Links & References
- “Dugouts,” Spartacus Educational website
- diagram of a trench at SchoolHistory website
- “Trench Warfare,” Wikipedia
- diagrams and more information on trench warfare at Spartacus Educational website
- Bairnsfather cartoon “The Communication Trench” (from More Fragments from France, vol. 2, p. 25)
- Bairnsfather cartoon “The New Submarine Danger” (from More Fragments from France, vol. 2, p. 37)
- Bairnsfather cartoon “Those Tubular Trenches” (from More Fragments from France, vol. 2, p. 43) showing HQ in a dugout
- Bairnsfather cartoon “What time do they feed the sealions, Alf” (from More Fragments from France, vol. 2, front cover)
- Bairnsfather cartoon "My Dug-Out" (from Fragments from France, p. 4)
- Pictures
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Miller
- About Miller
- Ross mentions Miller frequently and it sounds as though he is one of the NCOs working with Ross and Turkey in the Orderly Room.
There are, unfortunately, five Millers listed in the Calgary Herald as returning with the 50th Bn. It is hard to know which one he is.
In his letter of Nov. 8, 1917, Ross says that Miller is "not twenty yet" and spent nine months in the line and was wounded twice before being assigned to the Orderly Room.
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Camp
- Note
- What Ross calls “camp” is likely what many Canadians instead refer to as “the cottage.” Wikipedia confirms this, telling us that, “In much of Northern Ontario, New England, and Northern New York a summer house near a body of water is known as a camp.”
Source: “Cottage,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottage, accessed 12 February 2008. - Contribute to the Project
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rats
- Note
- Along with lice and wet feet, rats were among the worst afflictions of trench life. Both brown and black rats multiplied in the trenches and on the battlefields, feeding on decaying corpses and on the army’s food scraps and waste. Not content with foraging in No Man’s Land on the traces of food still clinging to the tin cans the men threw out of the trenches, rats invaded the trenches themselves. They grew extremely bold, snatching food that had been laid down for only a few seconds and crawling over men’s faces as they slept at night. These corpse-fed beasts also grew huge—some contemporary reports claim as large as cats. Apart from being a nuisance, the creatures engendered a profound revulsion, even horror, in the soldiers, perhaps because it was known that they ate the bodies of dead men (very often beginning with the eyes). Although the men were forbidden to shoot rats (since it was considered a waste of valuable ammunition), they sometimes did—as well as devising numerous other methods for killing them by clubbing, bayoneting, and so on. Since a pair of rats can produce 800–900 offspring in a year, these efforts were futile and the rat population remained robust throughout the war.
Source: “Trench Rats,” First World War.com, updated 22 September 2002, http://www.firstworldwar.com/atoz/rats.htm, accessed 7 October 2008; “Feature Articles: Life in the Trenches,” First World War.com, updated 24 January 2004, http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/trenchlife.htm, accessed 7 October 2008. - Contribute to the Project
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War Diary
“B” Coy. relieved “D” Company in the Front Line. Officers carried out reconnaissance of the line. Casualties. 1 O.R. Wounded.
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Photographs
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