From Machine Gunners on the Western Front:

The Emma Gees

by

Captain Herbert W. McBride

(Emma Gee is signaler's lingo for M. G., meaning machine gunner.)

 

It rained all day, but we finally got everything off the ship and on

the trains and pulled out about dark. No one knew where we were going.

The only training camp we had heard of in England was Salisbury Plain

and what we had heard of that place did not make any of us anxious to

see it. The First Canadian Division had been there and the reports

they sent home were anything but encouraging. Our men were nearly all

native-born Canadians and "Yankees," and they cracked many a joke

about the little English "carriages," but they soon learned to respect

the pulling power of the engines. We made ourselves as comfortable as

possible with eight in a compartment, each man with his full kit, and

soon after daylight the train stopped and we were told to get out. The

name of the station was Westerhanger but that did not tell us

anything. The native Britishers we had in our crowd were mostly from

"north of the Tweed" so what could they be expected to know about

Kent. For Kent it was, sure enough, and after a march of some two or

three miles we found ourselves "at home" in West Sandling Camp. And

how proudly we marched up the long hill and past the Brigade

Headquarters, our pipers skirling their heartiest and the drummers

beating as never before. For we were on exhibition and we knew it. The

roads were lined with soldiers and they cheered and cheered as we came

marching in. We were tired, our loads were heavy and the mud was

deep, but never a man in that column would have traded his place for

the most luxurious comforts at home.

 

There came a time when we hated that hill and that camp as the devil

hates holy water, but that Sunday morning, marching into a British

camp, with British soldiers, eager to keep right on across the channel

and clean up Kaiser Bill and feeling as though we were able to do it,

single-handed--why, the meanest private in the Twenty-first Canadians

considered himself just a little bit better than any one else on

earth.

 

Thus we came to our home in England, where we worked and sweated and

swore for four solid months before we were considered fit to take our

place in the firing-line. All that time, from the top of Tolsford

Hill, just at the edge of our camp, we could see France, "the promised

land"; we could hear the big guns nearly every night, and we, in our

ignorance, could not understand why we were not allowed to go over and

settle the whole business. We marched all over Southern England. I

know I have slept under every hedge-row in Kent. We dug trenches one

day and filled them up the next. We made bombs and learned to throw

them. We mastered every kind of signaling from semaphore to wireless,

and we nearly wore out the old Roman stone roads hiking all the way

from Hythe to Canterbury. We carried those old Colt guns and heavy

tripods far enough to have taken us to Bagdad and back.

 

But, oh, man! what a tough lot of soldiers it made of us. Without just

that seasoning we would never have been able to make even the first

two days' marches when we finally did go across. The weaklings fell by

the wayside and were replaced until, when the "great day" came and we

embarked for France, I verily believe that that battalion, and

especially the "Emma Gees," was about the toughest lot of soldiers who

ever went to war.

 

(Emma Gee is signaler's lingo for M. G., meaning machine gunner.)

 

It must not be inferred that our four months in England were all work

and worry. Personally, I derived great pleasure from them. We were

right in the midst of a lot of old and interesting places which figure

largely in the early history of England. Within a mile of our camp was

Saltwood Castle, built in 499 by the Romans and enlarged by the

Normans. It was here that the conspirators met to plan the

assassination of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury, only sixteen miles

away, and which we had ample opportunities to visit. Hythe, one of the

ancient "Cinque Ports," was but a mile or so distant, with its old

church dating from the time of Ethelbert, King of Kent. In its crypt

are the bones of several hundred persons which have been there since

the time of the Crusaders, and in the church, proper, are arms and

armor of some of the old timers who went on those same Crusades. Among

numerous tablets on the walls is one "To the memory of Captain Robert

Furnis, Commanding H. M. S. Queen Charlotte: killed at the Battle of

Lake Erie: 1813"--Perry's victory. About three miles away was "Monk's

Horton, Horton Park and Horton Priory," the latter church dating from

the twelfth century and remaining just about as it was when it was

built. Then there was Lympne Castle, another Roman stronghold; Cæsar's

Plain and Cæsar's Camp, where Julius is said to have spent some time

on his memorable expedition to England; and, within easy reach by

bicycle, Hastings and Battle Abbey where William the Norman defeated

Harold and conquered England. The very roads over which we marched

were, many of them, built by the Romans. Every little town and hamlet

through which we passed has a history running back for hundreds of

years. We took our noon rest one day in the yard of the famous

"Chequers Inn," on the road to Canterbury. We camped one night in

Hatch Park, where the deer scampered about in great droves. On Sundays

we could charter one of the big "rubber-neck" autos and make the round

trip to Margate, Ramsgate, Broadstairs, Deal and Dover.

 

 

But, just the same, when we were told, positively, that we were going

to leave, there were no tears shed. We had gone over there to fight

and nothing else would satisfy us.