Lieutenant Claude Castlemaine Temple
2ND CANADIAN MOUNTED RIFLES
IN THE RESERVE ARMY SECTOR, Gough had begun to reorganise his men north of the River Ancre, his wider objective an eastward attack at that end of the battlefield. In the meantime though, his troops south of the river still had plenty to do. At the end of September, Gough was immediately concerned with both driving the enemy out of strong points such as Stuff and Schwaben Redoubts and the capture of Regina Trench, a long German line running from north of Courcelette westwards towards St Pierre Divion. Even by Somme standards, this single trench was destined to become an embittered bone of contention between the Germans and the combination of British and Canadian troops facing them.
Lieutenant Claude Temple. (Upper Canada College)
Among the Canadians was a 34-year-old bank manager named Claude Temple. Born in Quebec of Irish extraction, Claude’s family boasted a rich military history all over the globe. Raised in Toronto, he had attended Upper Canada College, in eastern Ontario, where he was a talented hockey player and athlete. At the outbreak of the war, Claude was the manager of the Granville branch of the Northern Crown Bank in Vancouver, where he had been severely wounded in 1913 when robbers held up the establishment and he refused to hand over the keys. Claude was with the first contingent of Canadians to enlist and arrived in Europe at the end of 1914. Wounded at Langemarck, near Ypres in the spring of 1915, he was transferred to a military hospital in Orpington and then given a commission in the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles on recovery.
When the battalion left the line after Robert Killip was killed on 12th September, he was amongst forty casualties. Three days later Claude and the rest of the men played their part in the capture of Mouquet Farm in the advance of 15th September, being detailed to deal with a certain strong point; but this came at a cost of almost 100 men. By dawn on 17th September the mounted rifles had consolidated their position and handed it over to a battalion of the Dorset Regiment. A period of rest and provision of working parties followed before, in the last week of September, the unit was ordered to be ready to move back into the lines at two hours’ notice.
Troops had been in and out of Regina Trench already in an attempt to seize it, but it would be a ‘baffling stumbling block’. British, Canadians and Germans would simply lose count of how many times they had taken it and then lost this position by the time the matter was settled. The death toll would be appalling for such a small gain. It was a bleak spot.
The whole country over which the Canadians were to battle, before they could claim finally that they had gained their objective, was a barren waste; nothing was to be seen in front but innumerable shell holes – not a tree standing in the immediate vicinity to serve as a landmark. The roads were shelled so incessantly that their appearance changed each day.
On the night of 27th September, Claude and the rest of the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles relieved the 8th Canadian Infantry in the front lines to the west of Courcelette. It was a puzzling relief, their guides as clueless as they were about where they were all to go. It was not until after dawn the following day that the Mounted Rifles finished getting into position. No trench stores were taken, neither did they find any in the lines they took over. A number of dead Germans were lying in their trench and also some wounded of multiple nationalities. The dead Germans were thrown over the parapet and the wounded attended to and evacuated as soon as possible. Claude’s battalion also managed to get out into no-man’s-land and retrieve a number of wounded Canadian and British men from the open, who were also attended to and removed.
Whilst Claude’s battalion was sent back into reserve, back up in the lines, the beginning of October saw the first concerted effort to take Regina Trench from the enemy. As part of this, the 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles were ordered to attack from Destremont Farm on the Albert-Bapaume Road, to a point north of Courcelette, on 1st October.
The initial attackers got to within 100 yards of Regina Trench when the enemy opened with machine-gun fire, causing high numbers of casualties. They could, however, see the Germans getting out of their front line and there were very few left in the trench when they got there. They found that section of Regina blown in and work was at once commenced to consolidate the position and make it habitable. To the rear, there was confusion as to how many of their men had made it to Regina Trench as many men had failed, being caught on uncut wire. Those coming up behind them were forced to fall back. Reinforcements were sent up just to ensure that the battalion could hold on to its original line.
Back in Regina Trench there was vicious fighting in the captured section and the men inside found both their flanks in confusion. The scene was frantic. One group managed to get a German machine gun turned on its own men to drive off constant counter-attacks; another had put up trench blocks on either side of them but were surrounded by the enemy. A light mortar was rushed up to join them with as much ammunition as the available men could carry. By 5:30pm the fighting numbers were so low that it was necessary to send up the last of their reinforcements and some men scraped together from headquarters, including officers’ servants and usually unarmed men.
Still the Germans attempted to flush out their Canadian attackers. The artillery had been laying a mixed bombardment behind Regina Trench to try to prevent any enemy support coming up, but a gap had opened up between two Canadian battalions along the line and the Germans seized the opportunity to get back in the trench and start bombing their way down it towards the 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles. Blocks were now up at both ends of the captured section of Regina, about 100 yards in length, and the men were already attempting to dig a communication trench back towards their own front line, but numbers were dwindling fast and the counter-attacks continued. The battalion had nobody left to call on and so an officer called for Claude Temple to round up two platoons and rush to their aid.
At about 6:30pm Claude arrived and was ordered into a trench ready to move up into a support line next to Regina as soon as the men that were in it moved forward. Another bombing attack was made on Regina Trench, the Canadians trying to move along with packs of riflemen attacking in the open on either side of the trench to support them. After proceeding 150 yards, the bombers ran into a large force of the enemy and were driven back, but the flanking parties rushed overland into the trench and beat the enemy back with their bayonets. The relentless, hand-to-hand fighting continued into the night.
At about 1:30am, having received reinforcements and reorganised, the Canadians again pushed the enemy back and gained approximately another 500 yards. By 4am they had cleared the Germans out of a sizeable portion of Regina Trench. The piece of the enemy line that they had now seized was deep and the officer in charge considered it a suitable place to put in a block. Casualties were such that it seemed unwise to attempt to take any more. The ground was littered with Canadian and German dead, the latter caught heavily by machine guns as they attempted to retire into their support lines. No more reinforcements had arrived, so the officer in charge went looking for them himself. Claude and his men were called into the support line ‘with all possible speed’ as the Canadians braced themselves for a German counter-attack, rushing forward parties with a mortar and bombs. Before any of them could get into position, though, the counter-attack came.
The enemy came forward in overwhelming numbers, attempting to outflank the mixed force that included Claude and his men. They held on until two machine guns had been put out of action and the supply of bombs exhausted. At 7am on 2nd October the Canadian position became untenable and the men fell back, bringing the majority of wounded out with them. The reinforcements, including Claude, had arrived just too late to retain the section of Regina Trench that had been so stubbornly held. The Canadians had to be content with consolidating the support line and, as Claude and the rest of the exhausted men worked on tirelessly, they were subjected to heavy intermittent shelling. Every effort was made to bring in as many wounded as possible, but that evening a furious bombing attack started to the right of their sector. SOS signals were sent up but the men could not tell whether the assault was being made by the enemy or the battalion on their right. The bombing and rifle fire seemed to be spreading towards their front and a heavy barrage was requested on the enemy front line and support. As 3rd October dawned, Regina Trench was back in German hands. The Canadians were exhausted, ‘often fighting practically hand-to-hand for thirty-four hours against superior numbers’. In the confusion, Claude Temple had been killed.
Tributes flowed to his family. ‘He was utterly fearless and was held in high esteem by the men of his company,’ read one; ‘Courage, pluck, cheerful endurance of hardship’ and ‘a soldier and a gentleman,’ said another. A stretcher-bearer revealed that he had seen Claude trying to establish communications with another battalion. He said that he had seen Claude jump into a German trench and come out again further up. They thought they had seen him hit by machine-gun fire, but his body was nowhere to be seen. Reported wounded and missing on 3rd October, Claude was later accepted as having died on or around this date. His body, if recovered, was never identified. At the end of the war, Vimy Ridge was selected as the site for a memorial commemorating Canadians on the Western Front. On it are the names of 11,163 men who have no known grave, including Claude Temple.