Rest Area Shelled

The middle of March right through until I suppose about four months and they'd give me four days off, five days off, they'd let me out the line, outside of that I was into everything. I only got that one little... Now, there was a bunch of shacks there. I was in sleeping. First thing you know this damn big shell come over head and went down the other side of me and “Whammo!” Of course, it woke me up and I said God I was some lucky that didn't hit the shed and it went in and around the other side and there was fellows was crawling out of that, there was five or six dead in there. The shell had just went over where I was sleeping like that, down in the ground and it exploded. When it got in there it exploded onto three or four people that had been sleeping. There wasn't much left of them. And this is the way, this is the way this stuff was. You never knew when you was going to get one of them big shells from the front.

Mr. McLeod describes being on rest leave behind the lines, and the camp being struck by German artillery. Several deaths occur because of the shelling.

Russell McLeod

Russell McLeod was born on October 9, 1899 in Liverpool, Nova Scotia. His father was a fisherman, and prior to his enlistment, they fished together. Mr. McLeod joined the 219th Battalion in 1916 and trained at Camp Aldershot, Nova Scotia. He was sent overseas that fall, and joined the 25th Battalion in France. He served during Canada's 'Last Hundred Days', seeing action at the Hindenburg Line, Cambrai and Mons. After the armistice, he served as a member of the Occupation Army in Germany.