Chapter 21: BACK HOME TO 'C' BATTERY

About mid October Major Mackay came back to take over "C" Battery again and asked that two of his regular officers and I rejoin him as his acting Captain and 2 i/c for a time until a reinforcement Captain arrived. We were following up on the Germans fighting a masterly withdrawal. We were getting farther from railhead, forward supply dumps. The ammunition wagon lines, also located farther behind the guns than normally, were wearing out our hoses and their drivers. Several animals died.

About the first day of Nov ember 1918, we over-ran a German supply column, drawn by over thirty horses. All the captured horses or mules were required to be turned over to the Divisional Veterinary Section to have their health checked out. In our case we impounded them ourselves to help in hauling forward the ammunition. In retrospect with the Armistice coming in ten days, they could have been turned in then and all would have been well.

I never thought of it at the time. Every man and beast were very tired, it became quite cold and the influenza epidemic that the Germans were suffering had finally reached us. We had reached and captured Landrecis by November 9TH and received orders to hold our positions, ceasefire but keep on guard. We were glad to crawl into whatever shelter we could find and go to sleep. At least two of our men died of influenza in the next few days. - very sad when one considered that they had come through the War unscratched and never lived to experience our ultimate success.

On November 17TH we withdrew through part of the Hindenberg Line to LeCateau. The batteries of both the 110th and 112th Brigades were quartered round a number of damaged abandoned villages. "C" Battery was allotted the villages of Carnieres and St. Vaast, so as acting captain, I was in control of a somewhat devastated area of roughly seven square miles. We were given thirty German Prisoners to help in cleaning things up, who were quite willing to help as we were feeding, clothing sheltering and treating them quite decently. When the villagers began to return, they objected to the presence of the Germans, but changed their minds when they found out that they would have to take over the work that the German Prisoners were doing. The prisoners stayed until the middle of February, when everything being frozen, work was impossible so they were allowed to go home and were given a ride in a lorry to the border.

At the village of St. Vaast there was plenty of forage, hay, straw bales and oats in sacks for our extra horses.

Christmas was a memorable affair. We had a Christmas Church Parade and we had turkey for the first time in years. We undertook all sorts of sports activities to keep the morale high. On the whole we were a happy community.

Batteries played against batteries at soccer. I began to take up running again, mostly middle distances such as half miles and miles. We had brigade level track meets then Divisional Championships, held at Cambrai. From there some of us went on to Brussels in Belgium where what was billed as the Peace Olympics was staged. Here I met and competed in the fifteen hundred meters, against a man from Finland, who was to be the world's premier middle and long distance runner over the next decade. His mane was Paavo Nurmi. He was a postal delivery clerk, and had to run over his route, uphill and downhill, developing tremendous muscles and endurance. He ran flatfooted, with short strides to my loping style, on the tips of my toes. I managed to come in third, a young captain named Alexander was second and Nurmi was first.