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Gibbs, Philip, 1877-1962

"Now It Can Be Told"

"
No one would deny that.
Out of three thousand men in the Canadian 8th Brigade their casualties
were twenty-two hundred.
There were 151 survivors from the 1st Battalion Canadian Mounted
Rifles, 130 from the 4th Battalion, 350 from the 5th, 520 from the
2nd. Those are the figures of massacre.
Eleven days later the Canadians took their revenge. Their own guns
were but a small part of the huge orchestra of "heavies" and field
batteries which played the devil's tattoo upon the German positions in
our old trenches. It was annihilating, and the German soldiers had to
endure the same experience as their guns had given to Canadian troops
on the same ground. Trenches already battered were smashed again. The
earth, which was plowed with shells in their own attack, was flung up
again by our shells. It was hell again for poor human wretches.
The Canadian troops charged at two o'clock in the morning. Their
attack was directed to the part of the line from the southern end of
Sanctuary Wood to Mount Gorst, about a mile, which included Armagh
Wood, Observatory Hill, and Mount Gorst itself.


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