Intuition

First World War Audio Archive

Intuition

Transcript

We were rushed there down in a kind of a rush and went in on this

Picture of young Soldier.

front where there had been quite severe fighting. And I can remember going up to take over at night, of course, that we were under very heavy shell fire but we never come under attack after we took the line or the Germans never actually attacked. For several nights they suffered very, very, heavy shell fire and quite a few of our fellows got killed. We had quite a few casualties in there just from shell fire and I can remember one incident. This Corporal Dan, who I was telling you about, was still with our gun section, and we had a post out about 100 yards I suppose it would be, maybe not that far, 50 to 100 yards in front of the main line, like our front line, had dug a kind of a pit out there and had a machine gun out there. And I can remember one particular night there, I think about the second or third night, we went up there, we were getting quite a lot of shell fire around there, but not really particularly close but fairly close to our machine gun, and some of it hitting the trenches, the front line. But Dan, this is something that I don’t know, they talk about, what do you call this - supersensitive or something. He was, seemed to be very nervous which was very unusual for him and he said to me all at once, he said, “You know I think I’m gonna move out of here, move back to the line.” And I said, “The captain would probably take a dim view of that.” He said, “I think I’ll move and take a chance on it.” So we moved back to the line and we hadn’t hardly got in the line ‘til a shell hit right in that post, left a shell hole there about fifteen feet deep. So I guess whatever sort of a intuition he had was right. I don’t know how you would kind of describe this incident at all but I can recall that we had a burying party allotted for to collect the bodies and bury them. There was quite a few, one of the Highland divisions, the British division were in there. I forget which one but they were kilties and you haven’t got a record of who was our padre at that time, have you? This little fellow was really a principle fellow and we had had one before that and when the battalion went in the line, he stayed out. But this fellow, he went in the line with the battalion and everything. He had told the company commander that when this burial party was ready, he wanted to come up there So I was one of the ones, I don’t know whether you’d call it unfortunate or not, but I was in charge of this burial party. We had to go out just at dusk and collect these bodies. There was plenty of large shell holes there. We just kind of squared out a large shell hole. I think on our particular front, we collected 11 bodies, I think it was and placed them in this shell hole and

Picture of Veteran.

came back in the line to wait for the padre then. Well, by the time he came up, it had really got black dark and we hadn’t taken really any particular markings of where this shell hole was and there was lots of shell holes. I can remember going out looking for this shell hole with the group I was with before, I think it was eight men, seven men and myself and we felt into quite a few shell holes without finding any bodies. I had a little consultation to one side with a couple of the fellows that I’m not going to walk No Man’s Land all night. The next one we come to, we’ll tell the padre, “That’s the one.” And he can say his little service so we can come back when we can see sometime. Anyway the next one was the right one. So, it was alright.

Description

Mr. Stevenson describes how his corporal’s instinct saved their lives during a barrage, and burying the dead in shell holes as part of a burial party.

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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