Letters From the Front

Dated: May 18, 1916

The following are extracts from letters of Dr. William Gardner, son of Major Gardner, and give glimpses of actual conditions at the war front in France. The doctor is stationed in a hospital close to the front:

We have now been at this place two weeks tomorrow. Have had a lot of work. More wounded pass through the three clearing stations now than from all the rest of the British front up to the time they took over 30 miles of front from the French. However, this Ypres salient produces its steady stream of wounded, and when there is a heavy bombardment, wounded men come in shoals. The Canadians are all back in this area again, and occupy much the same line they did one year ago. Advance is not very rapid at that rate, and when Germany is to be defeated I don't know. I think I told you I had dressed half a dozen German prisoners here in one day. They had been taken out of the crater after a prolonged bombardment, and they were mighty glad to get out of it. They told me there was a great number of dead and about 100 unwounded Germans were taken out. Then the German artillery turned on the crater and it drove us out in turn, and so it has gone on for days. Whoever holds the crater is in for terrific shelling, and nearly all the wounds are shell wounds. There is only a sprinkling of bullet wounds. Bullet wounds are usually much less severe than shell wounds, which usually are very bad, as the fragments of the bursting shell carry into the wound pieces of dirty clothing and the mud and dirt sticking to it. We have had a great many Canadians in lately, especially Winnipeg man, who had a heavy shelling last week. We can see a row of our observation balloons along our front and the corresponding row in the distance along the German front.

I have been very busy operating all day. It is now midnight and I am just watching an operation on an officer from Winnipeg, shot in the head. Last night the bombardment was terrific. Just before dawn the Germans drove the Canadians out of the crater at St. Eloi. Today we have been having Canadians in all day, some fearfully wounded, many dying. Nearly all the wounds are by high explosives, few rifle bullets and the high explosive shell makes terrible wounds.

There have been 700 Canadian casualties in the last 24 hours. A number of the men coming in are from Winnipeg, some I knew well while I lived there.

There is an almost continuous rumbling of artillery, and at night the sky is lit up with flashings of big guns like summer lightning. Almost any time of the day aeroplanes are passing to and fro either going over the firing line or coming from it. I opened a skull yesterday with a depressed fracture from a bullet. A piece of bone was driven down on the brain and I removed it. These operations are common here, but not nearly so common as when the men did not have the steel helmet. There are some very fine surgeons here, who have been at this work a year and more. More wounded go through from this area than from any other part of the front, so for work we have struck the best part of the line. One hospital took in 500 patients yesterday, nearly all Canadians. Hospital train comes in daily and takes away all but those unfit to travel. A great many die here and are buried in the cemetery near the hospital.

It has been raining all night but it is a nice day this morning. We don't have time to move very far from our work, so have seen little of the country. We came from Havre by motor and enjoyed the drive immensely. We came by Neufchatel, Abbville, St. Omer and so to here. Stayed one night at Neufchatel and one had Abbeville. This run was through the best farming country all the way I have ever seen. Most of it is very rolling but they cultivate almost every foot of it. There are no fences and no stock, all given over to cultivation of crops. Some of the valleys are very beautiful, with square cut fields of plowed land. There are numerous beautifully kept forests and the road is mostly lined with rows of tall poplars or willows.

The number of shells the artillery can shoot away is enormous. One gunner, who came in here wounded, told me his gun, a 6 inch howitzer, firing a 100 pound shell, had fired 600 shells in 24 hours. Some nights almost all the guns in the salient fire incessantly, and I only hope we reap the same harvest of Germans as they do of us. The aeroplanes are very busy overhead on fine days and the artillery every night.

I had a very interesting visit to Armentieres a few days ago. We went down by ambulance to buy a stove for the mess. The Germans occupied the town for eight days early in the war, and our front line is now 1500 yards east of the center of the town. It must have had a population of about 20,000 people before the war, but only some 3000 now remain. The communication trench runs into one of the streets of Armentieres. There are lots of evidence of shelling, but as in Poperinge few demolished houses. Where a shell has exploded in a building there is one great hole and the walls, ceilings and floors punctured in all directions by flying splinters, yet one would say the structure could readily be repaired. One tall factory chimney has a shell hole thru it, making two windows, leaving the chimney standing quite straight. When a shell explodes on the street or in a square the buildings round are fairly splattered with pieces of shell and stone from the cobbled pavement. Some of them make holes through the walls, others knock chunks out, and all the glass comes crashing down. It is a weird thing to walk along wholly deserted streets with rows and rows of empty houses. On other streets an occasional house is still occupied and the only sign of life I found in one long street was two little children playing on the sidewalk. The store where we bought the stove had a shell hole through it. The shell had passed through a neighboring building entering at the roof, crossing two bedrooms, just missing the foot of the bed in one, on thru a hall into the store by the ceiling, just missing an iron beam and on out the door, exploding in the street. The clocks are stopped in the church steeple at various hours and on the whole one gets quite a feeling of passing through a deserted city. I'm going this afternoon to Mont des Cats to see sick officer I know from Winnipeg. From 12 today till 12 tomorrow we are not taking in patients, so have some freedom to wander around.