‘I am afraid there will be many sore hearts in Canada’
Toronto soldier’s letters describe combat in Belgium and horrors of gas attack
Almost a week into the fighting at Ypres, Lt. James Wells Ross had hardly been able to take off his boots, or sleep. He told his mother back home in Toronto that the name of this Belgian city and the “barbarous gas” would be remembered.
“This is probably the biggest battle in this part of the war. Men of other regiments who were at Mons, St. Eloi and other fights say that this has them all beaten,” he wrote home on May 3, 1915. “I think the first Canadian Division has shown the world the stuff it’s made of.”
The Toronto Star has been following Ross through his training at Valcartier, Que., and his first experiences on the Western Front, using letters his family shared with the Canadian Letters and Images Project. One hundred years ago, as the Toronto medical student marched across the Belgian border with his horses and artillery, he had no idea he was walking into history.
In their short time on the Continent, the Canadians had played a small role in Neuve Chapelle, but they had yet to be involved in a major action. By mid-April, Ross’s artillery brigade was stationed northeast of Ypres, the ancient cloth-trading city that Allied forces had been holding against continued German attacks. The Germans surrounded the Ypres area on three sides.
On April 22, at 5 p.m., German troops, hoping to break the stalemate, unscrewed the valves of gas canisters, and a mysterious green haze drifted into the light wind.
The gas crept at a walking pace toward the French lines near Lange-mark, just west of the Canadians. This would be the beginning of the Second Battle of Ypres.
Dr. George Nasmith, a sanitation expert with the city of Toronto, was overseas to supply safe drinking water for soldiers, and happened to be driving through the countryside, looking for Canadian headquarters, when he saw “a kind of ochre smoke in the direction of the trenches.”
He could hear the “zipp-zipp” of bullets. Then French soldiers appeared, running, turning, shooting, he told a reporter in a story published in the Star that May.
“And they all showed us their chests, saying “Poitrine! Poitrine! meaning they could not breathe.”
Nasmith correctly guessed it was chlorine — Toronto’s water has long been purified with use of the same gas. “And it is most poisonous . . . Nobody can stand that and it would be death to remain,” he later told a reporter.
(Nasmith would later create the war’s first gas mask by saturating a small cotton pad with hypersulphite of soda.)
With the French soldiers fleeing the poison, there was a 6.5-kilometre hole in the line. The Germans advanced three kilometres but didn’t have the manpower or planning to fully exploit the opportunity, and the Canadians rushed to fill the gaps. Ross, an officer with the 9th battery of the 3rd Brigade (Canadian Field Artillery), would spend the moonlit night firing shrapnel shells into Kitcheners’ Wood in a hastily planned counterattack.
Early on April 24, the Germans released more gas, directly into the Canadian lines. The 15th Battalion, (known as the 48th Highlanders), raised out of Toronto’s Moss Park armoury, held the extreme left of the Canadian line. The artillery brigade assigned to cover them had been pulled back to help near Kitcheners’ Wood. The men of the 15th had no idea. “The damp cloths over their mouths and nostrils, untreated with any chemical, helped but little against the chlorine, and with eyes blinded and throats burning, men collapsed on the floor of the trench in suffocating agony,” the official history notes.
Ross told his family of the “barbarous gas,” but was able to avoid the worst of it. Even where the artillery was, he said the fumes were fierce. “We have had some warm times but I am quite unharmed. But I am afraid there will be many sore hearts in Canada by the time this reaches you,” Ross wrote to his mother. He added two days later: “The Canadians certainly saved the situation here but paid an awful price, especially the infantry.”
News trickled back home. The To- ronto Daily Star declared “Second Battle of Ypres Greatest of the War.” On April 26, with no names in the casualty lists, the Star believed Toronto’s 15th Battalion had not been involved.
On April 27, the Cory family of Toronto received a cable from their son in the 15th: “Bob, prisoner.” By May 1, the Cory family had more information: Bob’s battalion had been “cut off” and “are practically all missing.” In the next few days, the faces of the missing, along with the dead and wounded of other battalions, filled the Star, as parents shared their anxiety, waiting to know what became of their boys.
Of the 912 men that went into battle for the 15th, 674 were casualties. It would be the greatest single-day loss of any Canadian unit in the First World War.
The Ypres battle was marked by miscommunication. Telephone lines had been cut by shells. The artillery, in some cases, didn’t get word that attack times had changed and fired their preliminary bombardment too early.
“The artillery support was not all that it might have been if there had been more notice,” Ross wrote, “and our regret for the infantry losses is increased by the feeling that, had things been otherwise, we might have helped them more.”
Military historian Terry Copp says that, in April 1915, the artillery had not developed rolling barrages or the ability to use maps and aerial photography to aim at targets.
“What we’re talking about (in Ypres) is an anti-infantry weapon,” Copp says. “It has to be brought fairly close to the front lines to be effective, not because of range so much, but because of the need to be able to see.”
When the majority of the Canadian infantry was relieved by April 26, the Canadian artillery stayed to support the British troops. On April 27, Ross had not yet taken off his boots. The misery of the battle became routine. As the shells sailed over head, he thought they sounded like the old streetcars on Sherbourne St.
By early May, all of Canada would know the true cost of holding Ypres: 6,000 casualties. Set against those terrible numbers was an increase in reputation.
“In their first major operation of the war, Canadian soldiers had acquired an indomitable confidence, which was to carry them irresistibly forward in the battles which lay ahead,” the official history notes.
Ross’s ears, stuffed with cotton wool, were sore from the blasts. His nerves were worn. The spirit of the men around him — even the ones who were shirkers and liars in more ordinary times — was “pure gold.” Dozens of horses had been killed, including his old pal Bob. His other horse Captain had been blasted with shrapnel. Captain shivered in fear “all day and night.”
“You should see my dirty unshaven face,” Ross wrote. “You would hardly know me.” A commemoration of the battle’s 100th anniversary will take place April 24, 7:30 p.m., at the 48th Highlanders Memorial, at the north end of Queen’s Park. The candlelit ceremony involving four Toronto-based regiments of the army will commemorate all who served at Ypres, but especially the fallen of two Toronto battalions (the 15th and 3rd).