Heavy barrage

First World War Audio Archive

Heavy barrage

Transcript

I had it in my mind that I would have liked to go to the 1st

Picture of young soldier.

CMR’s, I suppose on account of the, they weren’t mounted, of course, then anyway. They were mounted rifles but they weren’t mounted but they had the title. So, actually, when I was allotted to go to the 46th I was a bit disappointed, but after I was a little while with the battalion, I wasn’t disappointed at all. Even til this day, I have considerable pride in that battalion. When we joined the battalion, they were out on the line, of course, I just came down from Passchendaele. We were... Bruay, that’s where it was, yes. And for a couple of weeks, of course, we didn’t do very much except they used to take us out to little sham battles there on the outskirts of Bruay there but otherwise, the battalion was supposed to be resting, recuperating and they kind of indoctrinated us young fellows a little bit. We were split up, naturally, two or three to each section. They had been pretty badly mauled there so it was a pretty heavy reinforcement. I think about two hundred of us, but we were spread out. The particular section I went into was the Lewis gun section in number six platoon. We went up the line then in what was supposedly a pretty quiet sector, and actually it was, on what they called the Oppy front, I think it was. There actually wasn’t any actual fighting. They used to throw a few shells at us once in a while. There was quite an expanse of man’s land there, about half a mile, I would think. Every once in a while during the night there’d be a star shell go up and maybe a whiz bang, or not a whiz bang, a mini (inaudible) would come over. None of them actually hit our trench during the first couple of sessions I had up the line anyway, some of them lit fairly close to us. There was periodic, you know, machine gun fire and like that. I don’t think we had a casualty at all the first trip in the line. I think about the third time we went up the line, they wanted us to kind of inaugurated, I guess, so they put over a raid. We had what they called a box barrage. They used to usually have for these raids, that is boxed in a certain sector of the German line with really heavy artillery fire; the section we were going to raid. We’d hit the German front line trench first for three to five minutes and then lifted the barrage back, a couple of hundred yards back and also, they kept it on the sides, you see, so they boxed in that sector with pretty heavy fire. We didn’t have very much opposition. The trenches were pretty well demoralized, the first line trench. Actually, I never got into the trenches, because they had told our machine gun section to take up a position on the right of this raiding party. Just close to the German trench, just maintain a position there until the raiding party had raided the trench and come back. We were supposed to be the last to come back, of course, to follow them back. I think they captured five

Picture of Veteran.

prisoners. There was a few Germans killed by our party and shell fire too. I don’t think we had any casualties, that is, killed. I think three men, if I remember right, wounded. But they didn’t actually meet much competition. One thing that really impressed me was this barrage. I had never saw anything like that. I had been up the line a couple of times and, you know, saw quite a bit of stray shell fire. But this barrage was something again. They were hitting about every 10 feet of that line with shell about every 30 seconds and the noise of that going over your head was something again too.

Description

Mr. Stevenson describes joining the 46th Battalion just after Passchendaele, and then seeing action on the Oppy Front as a Lewis gunner. He describes in detail an Allied shelling strategy called a box barrage.

Donald Robert Stevenson

Donald Robert Stevenson was born in Bracebridge, Ontario, on October 28, 1897. His family moved to Saskatchewan where he worked with his father, a farmer. Mr. Stevenson felt duty bound to support the British Empire and enlisted on February 3, 1916, in the 217th Battalion. He took his basic training at Indian Head, Saskatchewan. He went overseas in May 1917, going to Bramshott where he joined the 46th Battalion. Mr. Stevenson’s service saw him in action at the Oppy Front, the Somme, and Canal du Nord. He was wounded in the neck and back, and returned to Canada to his family’s farm and then received a homestead through the Veterans Land Act, farming on his own at Fir Mountain, Manitoba. He married his wife, Elizabeth Helen, on November 7, 1923. He worked for Public Works in Winnipeg, and finally joined the railroad as a yardman, retiring in 1952. He then joined the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires. Mr Stevenson died on June 27, 1985.

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