THE YPRES TIMES 200 small tunnel. Jones' guess had been accurate. After two hours' hard work they entered the dugout. Its entrance had been blocked and buried, and faced the wrong way, but they proceeded to carry on their tunnelling. They burrowed a hole through the back of the old shelter, carefully removing the last few inches with their handsand looked through directly into the new German trench. Old roots and tangled grass were matted with the sod and screened Jones quite effectively, and no one came to that part. He estimated that there were at least 250 men in view all working strenuously to dig a very deep and strong trench. A strong machine gun post was under construction just north of his peeping place. He watched until he detected the posts of three enemy snipers, all the sentries on duty, and after an hour and three-quarters of close observation realized that the Germans did not know the position of the Canadian lines and thought them much nearer than they actually were. He saw that Warrington Avenue in their territory was being improved for use as a C. T. and that wire was being freely used. In places a double barrier was being erected, concertina barbed wire staked down with iron corkscrew standards. The results of this daylight patrol were that the artillery were provided with accurate targets. They were given the exact range of the German strong points and machine gun posts, knew every contour of the enemy front line, and where the wire was thickest. When the attack took place these strong points were olasted out of existence, and the wire was shredded. The 42nd, exploring, found an N.C.O. of the Princess Pats in a wrecked shelter where he had lain, alone, two days and nights, blind, his thign fractured, wounded in a dozen places. He had been hastily piaced there during the battle, and forgotten. He was carried half a mile on a bath mat to a point on the Menin Road where a wheeled stretcher was provided. Jones continued his patrolling, and did grand work in July while the oattalion was in the Steenvoorde area. He and four men went out from St. Peter's Street into No Man's land one dark night and crawled to an enemy sap. They found it dry and in good shape, with much evidence of very recent shovelling. Jones went along the sap to the entrance into the main trench. A sentry there shot up two flares directly over him, but he was not detected. The flare man moved along a distance and Jones went into the trench. He was astounded to see another man not more than ten feet from him but the German was peering over the top and did not glance toward him. Crouched, Jones peered in the other direction and saw a third man about twenty feet away. A faint drizzle of rain was falling and it was cloudy. He stayed half an hour, hidden at the sap entrance, remained there while five flares were shot over the sap, and was not seen. Another night Jones and three men crawled out to the German entanglements, and remained hidden there, for twenty hours. One of the scouts spoke German, and he overheard all that was said in the trench. The party had thirty hand grenades with them, and when a working party congested the trench in the early evening Jones signal led for action. They threw the thirty grenades among the crowded men and escaped safely to,their own lines. The 42nd, when at Crab Crawl, wanted to establish an advanced post. Thirty-five men went out at dark and built a barricade thirty yards long and two feet high, behind which they dug a shallow trench. Jones and an officer crawled to the German wire while the work was in progress. They examined it thoroughly and cut it at several points. They then dislodged a number of iron standards to which the wire was anchored and attached a rope to a long section of the wire. This rope, which had been paid out from a point in the 42nd line, was then passed over the parados to a large party or men lined up as for a tug-of-war. At a given signal they began to pull and drew over a large section of the German wire to their own barricade. Lively minutes followed. Flares went up

HISTORISCHE KRANTEN

The Ypres Times (1921-1936) | 1935 | | pagina 10