In early November 1916, Johnston arrived in France in a reinforcement draft for the 26th New Brunswick Battalion. In January 1917, he volunteered for the Canadian Machine Gun Corps, and in March he was posted to the 14th Canadian Machine Gun Company. The company was comprised of ten officers, about 180 other ranks, and fifty-four horses. It was equipped with sixteen Vickers machine guns, together with tripods, spare parts, etc., and thousands of rounds of small arms ammunition (S.A.A.) for the machine guns, as well as horse-drawn limbers and wagons, and pack saddles for transporting the guns, equipment, and supplies. Johnston joined the company on the Vimy Ridge front during preparations for the coming offensive. Eleven tunnels or subways almost four miles in length were excavated behind the Canadian lines. They were used to bring up troops and supplies to the front in relative safety and to evacuate the wounded.
We left Southampton for France on November 2, 1916, and had a very rough crossing on a small cattle boat. I guess it was not too well cleaned after the last trip with a load of cattle. This was my first experience of being really seasick and for about four hours I was afraid I was going to die. We were lying all over the decks and it was certainly a distressed looking mess.
Arrived at Le Havre, France on November 3, 1916, and was certainly pleased when we got ashore. I hoped the war would not end too quickly now, as I did not want to make another trip across the Channel for some time. We did not stay long in Le Havre and then marched to a camp, perhaps five miles away. I had a medical exam the following morning and we received the balance of our equipment, including rifle and gas mask. On November 5, Sunday morning, we attended our first church service in France. It was almost two hundred miles from here to the front line. We trained and drilled here for some time. On November 7, we received our first pay in francs. We had our first practice with handling and throwing the Mills bomb. It rained almost steady for the first week we were in France and it seemed everywhere we went there was lots of mud.
We left Le Havre on November 22 for the front. We travelled by train. We arrived at Rouen about ten a.m. the next day, and went up to a rest camp and had a meal. We moved the next day to St. Pol, then to Barlin, which was the base depot for the 26th Battalion. This was as far up as the railroad runs. We marched to an old Convent at HersinCoupigny. This is where I saw the first airplanes and thought they travelled really fast. I think the top speed was around 125 m.p.h. I also saw the first observation balloon. These were balloons made in the shape of a sausage with a basket hanging under it for the observer. They were held to the ground by long cables with a winch on a truck on the ground. We stayed around here for quite some time, including Christmas Day.
I remember Christmas Day real well and for the first time since leaving home I was homesick. Went over to the Y.M.C.A. in the afternoon and wrote several letters, bought a packet of cigarettes (my first try at smoking), smoked one and made myself sick and called it a day. We did not have our Christmas dinner until December 29, but had lots of turkey, etc., when we did get it.
On January 15, 1917, there was a call from our company for machine gunners. This was strictly voluntary and I was surprised when there were only two of us willing to try it. Right after the parade I found out why, as there was a lot of talk of a suicide squad. We were to move to another place to take a course on the Vickers machine gun.
Vickers machine guns. NAC/PA-001017
We left Hersin-Coupigny at eight o’clock on January 18, 1917, and arrived at Pernes at four p.m. It snowed all day and as it was eighteen kilometres (twelve miles), we had a real hard day, mostly marching on cobblestones. We stayed around here for a week or so longer and on January 22, we went to Pernes. We then went to a small town of about six hundred population named Floringhem.
This is where we were to take our machine gun course and practiced on the gun with target practice. I was greatly impressed with the power of the Vickers gun, especially while firing on the range, knocking down targets at one thousand yards. The gun would fire about six hundred shots a minute and did not cause too much trouble jamming, etc. We were far enough from the line now to be away from shellfire. We trained with the gun for another couple of weeks and were all allotted off to different sections.
Pack transport moving to the front meeting Canadian troops returning from the trenches. NAC/PA-000913
I was posted to the transport, but did not like this assignment, as I was greatly taken up with the handling of the gun. Whereas I had volunteered to go with the machine guns, I had nothing to do with this move. I soon found out that the army was bad enough before you had a horse to babysit, but with a horse there was not too much chance for ducking.
About fifteen of us went down to Abbeville for horses and equipment. Shortly after this [March 4, 1917] we moved up to Mont St. Eloi which was about five miles from the front line, and right back of Vimy Ridge.
I had been given a team of horses and it was one of my lucky breaks in the army. I had a small western team, about eight hundred and fifty pounds each and by far the best team in the outfit. My saddle horse was about as nice an animal as could be found and, although the off horse was somewhat nervous, they made a wonderful little team, and just about the right size for the type of work we had to do. I gave them credit for getting me out of a lot of dirty messes that I found myself in. I could drive the saddle horse anywhere if I wanted to, bareback and without a rein, only by leaning to one side and pressing with my knees. We must have had about sixteen teams in our battery.
During our stay at Mont St. Eloi, the whole area in front of the town was laid off in tape, supposed to be the same as the layout of the German trenches. We spent a lot of time going over these.
My first trip up the line at the Vimy front was a volunteer job and I almost decided then that there would be no more volunteering in the army, as I always seemed to stick my neck out at the wrong time. We had been ordered out for about three p.m. with a pack horse each with ammunition to take up to Neuville St. Vaast. One of the fellows was not feeling too well and, as I would not be going that trip, told him I would take his place. This was certainly another time that I should not have volunteered. This was about as miserable a mess as a fellow could have got in with a horse and come out OK.
The roads were plugged with all kinds of traffic imaginable. Horses, guns, trucks and troops going in all directions, but not too fast. The only time it seemed that we would move at all was when a big shell fell in the road, and then there would be a lot of rushing for a few minutes and then things would die down again. After a couple hours of this it would be dark and things would get really confusing. These trips, which we took almost each night until April 9, would last almost always from three or four in the afternoon until three or four next morning, and believe me that is a long time to stay in a saddle, if we had a team, or if we had a pack horse we would walk and ride the horse back.
This first trip up, when I unloaded my horse at the entrance of the tunnels at Neuville St. Vaast, a fellow stuck his head out of the tunnel and offered me about a half a cigarette tin of army rum (S.R.D.) [Service Rum, Diluted] and when I told him I did not drink, he just about collapsed. I guess he thought they must be scraping the bottom of the barrel for new recruits and were now sending the crazy ones over. I think perhaps I must have seemed odd. I turned to go back. We had to go back another way on account of the heavy traffic, from the way we came up. We started down the Arras-Lens road and we used to go almost down to Arras and then turned up towards Mont St. Eloi again. As we left Neuville St. Vaast, there was a heavy naval gun set up with the barrel sticking pretty well over the road. Of course we did not know this at the time, as it was really dark now. Just as we got under the gun, they decided it was a good time to fire it. It certainly lifted us off our saddles. Horses went in all directions and, as I was headed for home, let mine go as fast as he wanted to. A lot of the riders fell off, but all the bad luck I had was that I lost my steel helmet. You certainly feel undressed in a place like that with no steel hat, but for sure I could not go back for it. We all got back to the lines in the morning, with the loss of one man and no horses. Believe me, it was a good initiation for me on my first trip.
Canadian horse transport driver wearing a protective leg iron. MCOP
We went up there each night for a long while with pack horses and did not know until long afterwards that we were sometimes as near as a couple of hundred yards from the front line. One night I was sent up with a team and limber to bring out a couple of guns. It was dark when I left the horse lines and raining really hard. I did not think when I started out that it was a very smart thing to do, but had nothing to say about it, especially the thinking part. Of course, in a couple of hours I was completely lost and could not even tell in which direction the front line was, as guns were firing all around me, as well as a lot of shells falling. Whenever a shell would explode or a gun fire, everything would be fine for a few seconds and I could see, but that always made it a lot darker. All of a sudden, the whole thing seemed to cave in. The horse I was riding got too near an old trench and fell in. I went on top of him, then the wagon pole and the other horse on top of us. We always wore, while driving, what we called a leg iron, which was a kind of protection for our leg getting hurt between the saddle horse and the pole of the wagon. It was a heavy affair, reinforced with a heavy plate of steel. This certainly saved my leg from being broken tonight, but we were still in pretty bad shape. After a lot of manoeuvring I got things pretty well arranged in the trench, which would have to be a narrow one. I got some of the harness off the horses and clear of the limber so that we were all lined up in a row, the two horses, limber and myself. I found an entrenching tool (shovel) and after a lot of digging finally got the trench tapered off on one side so that I could get the horses out. By this time it was certainly a sea of mud and we were all in a nice mess.
I dragged out the harness and put it on the horses and started out again minus the limber. I certainly could not get that out. The pole was sticking up in the air above the level of the ground and could be seen for some distance in daytime. I wandered around for a while with the team, watching now for more trenches until it started to get light and found my way out. I found the horse lines OK and we were certainly a pitiful looking mess. Not near pitiful looking enough though when I told the sergeant that I had left the limber up there. He raved for a while and did not seem to understand and for sure I did not spend too much time trying to console him. He said as soon as it started to get dusk that night for two of us to go up and get it out. We started out with ropes, etc. In the meantime, after daylight, I think the Germans spotted the tongue of the limber sticking out of the trench and thought it was another gun pit. When we got there, there was very little of the old wagon left. It was completely blown to pieces. They certainly wasted a lot of ammunition on an old limber. I don’t remember if we ever got the guns out or not. I imagine they were carried out.
One can imagine the work the next day trying to get myself cleaned up, besides the horses and harness. The horses and harness would have to be attended to first, as horses would not last too long if all that old mud was not cleaned up as much as possible.
One morning we got back from a night trip at almost daylight. A company of Royal Engineers were billeted only a short way from where our huts were, and they (the engineers) got their breakfasts at our cookhouse. They were over there this morning and a heavy shell fell among them and killed sixteen and wounded thirty-two of their party. We had no casualties. It was a pitiful looking sight when we arrived back that morning, dead and wounded all around and bodies blown completely to pieces. Parts of flesh and equipment were hanging from the rafters and nails all over the building. That was one morning that I did not care too much for breakfast. I was not in France long enough to get used to this yet, but I guess on looking back now, one never quite got used to those things.
On March 24, 1917, while driver Robinson was standing between his team, after he had hooked them up to the G.S. [General Service] wagon, a shell came over, landed on the side of them and killed both horses. Robinson did not get a scratch, but went all to pieces, with a bad case of shell shock, and had to be taken down the line immediately. It was hard on the morale of us younger fellows, as he was the oldest one of the battery (perhaps thirty) and it seemed so strange for him to go that way. Things seemed to be bothering him a lot for the last couple of weeks, and he just broke.
The Germans seemed to be shelling our horse lines more now, day and night, and it was hard to get any rest, and everyone seemed to be gradually wearing down. It seemed to me that it was not the hard shelling that bothered us, but the continual nagging all the time, a few shells, a few bombs and always a dread. It reminded me of when I was a kid at home and I would have a bad toothache. I would doze off to sleep and dream that the tooth was out and no more ache, and then you wake up and the same thing over again. After about two more days of this, they moved our horse lines back a short ways to Villers-au-Bois. We were still being shelled there, but not nearly so much.
It is almost impossible to imagine some of the unusual things that can happen. I once saw a hitch of six horses and three drivers on a field gun, when a shell fell alongside them. Five of the horses were either killed or badly wounded, and the driver of the centre team drove off without a scratch to either him or his horse. Another time I was driving along an old road with my team. It was very quiet and only the occasional shell was coming over. A dispatch rider on a bicycle passed in front of me, not more than ten feet and all at once, threw his hands up and fell to the road. He was hit in the head by a machine gun bullet and died immediately. As we were a long way from the trenches, that bullet must have come over a mile before hitting him.
As a contrast, one night we were going through a small village which had been badly shelled. The street we were going up was as the leg of a T with the end of the street we were on butting into the top of the T. At the upper end of the street, one of the old brick houses had been blown down, leaving an opening at the end of the street we were on. We were not too far from the line, and the Germans must have had a machine gun or perhaps more sighted on this hole to fire on the street. We were about halfway up this street when the machine guns opened up.
We still had over a hundred yards to go before making a right turn. The bullets came down the length of the street like hail. All the foot troops made for the side of the street and cover, but we on the horses could do nothing. If there ever was a sinister sound, it is machine gun bullets going by you that close. A continual whisch like mosquitoes.
There was nothing much we could do but go into them until the turn at the end of the street, which we decided on as fast as the horses could make it. We had to make about two hundred yards, and did not make it in ten seconds. As a machine gun can fire as many as six hundred shots a minute, you can imagine how many bullets went by us in that length of time. Not one of our men or horses were hit. I do not know if anyone else was hit or not. It is easy to understand why machine gun bullets are called the silent death. How can one explain a deliverance such as this. It would seem impossible to get through. These are the things that used to make us wonder and worry.
One night, two of us with pack horses went up almost to the ridge (Vimy) and once got lost. (This seems to be an old habit of mine, getting lost, but I guess most everyone else had the same trouble.) It was a real clear moonlit night and we were not worrying too much, as the front was fairly quiet this night. I did not know how they (the Germans) would know we were there, but they must have, as all of a sudden they started shelling us. The shells were very small and made hardly any noise when they exploded, but soon found out the reason why. They were tear gas and we soon began to feel the effects, as we started to sneeze and get blinded. There was quite a bit of barbed wire around, which made it impossible to move around too fast. Under other circumstances it would have been laughable, as the shells seemed like toys shells alongside of the heavy shrapnel. We wandered around for some time and at last found our way back.
Pack horses transporting ammunition to the front, Neuville St. Vaast, April 1917. NAC/PA-001229
Shortly before Vimy, we went back a couple of miles to have a couple of days’ rest. The first night the shelling where we were at was just bad enough that we could get no sleep. The next day, another fellow and I decided that about dark we would take our horses and go to a place about a mile away where we knew it would be more quiet. It was on a road along a high bank and we certainly enjoyed ourselves that night. We came back to the horse lines about daylight and in the meantime the company had orders to move. Everything was ready to go and they could not find us. We made it just in time, without breakfast. We certainly had to do some talking to get out of that one, though.
The Battle of Vimy Ridge, April 1917. Some of the villages Johnston mentions are located just off the top left corner of the map. Floringhem and Pernes are twenty-one kilometres to the north-northwest, Bruay is ten kilometres to the northwest, and Barlin and Hersin-Coupigny are five kilometres to the north.
