Description
Mr. Brice describes his reconnaissance of the bridge and crawling to safety under the nose of a sniper.
Harry Brice
Harry Brice was born in Wimbledon Common, England, on August 26, 1888. He left home for Australia, via Canada, in 1909, but he fell in love with Saskatchewan and stayed. Mr. Brice was a Corporal in the 9th Field Company, Royal Canadian Engineers. Designated for special services with the 42nd Battalion, he and his crew first trained in weaponry, Allied and German, and became a Lewis gun crew helping to hold the Allied Northern flank during the Michael Offensive. He and his crew were then selected for a highly secretive mission, to debug the bridge at Domart which had been booby trapped by the French to thwart a German advance. However, the Allies now needed to cross the bridge to advance on the German positions. Mr. Brice describes in great detail the process of removing explosives, under threat of enemy fire, from a roadbed. There is no record of Mr. Brice’s post-war experience. He died August 26, 1959.
Transcript
The next night, of course, we went up there and I have to examine that bridge, I’ve got to examine this bridge. I’ve got a problem fellas. That bridge has got to be examined in daylight. I can’t examine that bridge in the dark. Well, I go see how I’m gonna do it. So anyway, I’ve got to figure that out. We, anyway, I had it all figured out. There was a lot of rushes there and you’d cut these rushes down. You’d cut a pathway from the bridge around so I could get around to that shaft without the rushes moving. If a sniper sees anything moving, he’s gonna shoot at it. I better crawl. I’d rather lay down here. I did that. I took the first day’s guard, I guarded the first day. But I waited there till daylight, laying on, flat on my back, right on the ground. Oh, the ground was wet. I wanted to be in sight of that brick arch and I’m lucky I did. But I have to wait till daylight. I have to wait anyway, and so. Oh, it was a long time coming and I could hear the sniper shooting, (inaudible), every time a sniper shot would go off, you know, my backbone would tingle. They can’t see me in here, they’ll never guess I’m here. And then it got late, as luck would have it, there’s five bricks missing five feet down from the centre of the arch on the east side of the bridge (inaudible). And that meant the right hand side was sound for all this traffic that was going over, the right hand side was sound, but had they heavy traffic coming back, there was going to be trouble. The bricks were starting to fall in the water. That bridge couldn’t stand all the heavy traffic that they were going to put over it. And I had the information I had but now the next problem was to get back into that shelter, into that little dugout. And I had been laying on my back and was I wet. So I rolled over on my stomach and I laid there and let the sun shine on me for a little while. I was in no hurry, I said, the longer I wait, the safer it is. I was right, I’d been in the trenches long enough. For the first hour or so, everybody was very keen, everybody was on their toes, but after about two hours they got slacked off you see, nothing to shoot at. Too light, nobody was going to stick their head up in broad daylight. So I waited and I waited. I was in no hurry and I gradually eased across my way back, a little bit at a time, very careful not to make the rushes move. Anyway, I got back.