72nd Seaforth Highlanders of Canada - waughfamily.ca

SEAFORTH HIGHLANDERS OF CANADAhour and ten minutes to elapse before the attack was tobe launched.The night was quiet. Along the front the Verey lightssoared as usual.Yet, concealed by the rain-swept darkness,a mighty army had gathered itself for its spring againsta foe who this time had no recourse except to hold, as thestatements of prisoners afterwards verified. They had hadtheir orders there was to be no retreatIt came to 5 :20 a.m. From somewhere in the grey approach to dawn a Vickers machine gun chattered madlyits staccato hammering splitting the death-like stillness asno bombardment could have done.For perhaps three secondsit continued this opening solo. Then the tension snappedand the full-throated roar of the barrage swept along thefront. The bitterest and hardest-fought action in which theCanadian Corps was ever to be engaged was on!Promptly on schedule .time thirty minutes after zerothe 72nd quitted their assembly place and moved in linesof sections in file over the crest of the slope to the westof Inchy, heading for Bourlon Wood. As the dawn broke,the strangest feature of all was the apparent absence ofthat wood and its high ground from view. The day before,the wood, and the hill rising some 300 feet above sea-level,had dominated our positions for miles in every direction.Now, not a sign of it was to be seen. The reason was thatit was swallowed up in a vast, slow-drifting bank of phosphorous smoke emitted from the special smoke shells ofour artillery. The wind, blowing gently from the west,wafted the pungent screen eastwards into the eyes of theenemy, blinding his artillery, confusing his troops, and concealing the real progress of the attack from his observation posts around the Wood itself. Some slight shellingwas experienced by the 72nd as, skirting Inchy to thesouth, they headed for the Canal du Nord. The impetuousattack of the troops engaged in the initial assault had flungthe enemy from his hold on the Canal, and the battle now140