{"id":10814,"date":"2015-03-12T06:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T10:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.royalmontrealregiment.com\/?p=10814"},"modified":"2015-03-12T06:00:59","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T10:00:59","slug":"smoke-em-if-you-got-em","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/smoke-em-if-you-got-em\/","title":{"rendered":"SMOKE 'EM IF YOU GOT 'EM"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday, March 12, 1915<\/i><\/p>\n

In Trenches, Rue\u00a0Petillon<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Battalion War Diarist wrote for this day: \u201cQuiet day on our front.\u00a0 Some fighting still going on at Neuve Chapelle.\u00a0 Usual schedule shelling and sniping.\u00a0 Night of 12th<\/sup>\/13th<\/sup> lost one man (Pte. A. Jones) killed, and one man wounded of a patrol which was out in No-Man\u2019s-Land.\u00a0 They were caught by machine gunfire.\u00a0 Sergt. Lang and 3 men went out and searched carefully, remaining out till dawn, but could find no trace of Jones.\u00a0 It is supposed he was taken, either dead or alive by enemy patrol which was known to be out also.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0 The official records declared Pte Arthur Stanley Jones # 25960 \u201cPreviously reported wounded and missing now for official purposes presumed to have died, as of March 26, 1915, in the trenches south of Fleurbaix.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"12<\/a>THIS DAY IN RMR HISTORY:\u00a0\u201cCanadian Associated Press; London, March 11.\u00a0 One would imagine from a letter received from a Canadian officer serving with the contingent on France that neither \u2018Jack Johnsons,\u2019 *\u00a0 the ubiquitous sniper, nor unceasing German bullets cause him and his men so much concern as the absence of cigarettes.\u00a0 \u2018A smoke at night now is a great comfort and it\u2019s hard to do without one,\u2019 he writes; and then he adds, \u2018Possibly we are not entitled to anything from the Imperial Government or from British newspapers, but the Canadian Government has evidently not provided for us in this way.\u2019<\/p>\n

He goes on to point out that English \u2018Tommies\u2019 get as many as 70 to 100 cigarettes per week.\u00a0 In addition to tobacco, while in their own particular case, for instance, twenty smokes is all they have received.<\/p>\n

Face Prussian Guards \u2013 Ten days ago this Canadian company had the distinguished honour of being face to face with Germany\u2019s crack regiment, the Prussian Guards.\u00a0 So close were they to one another that they could hear the \u2018Bosches\u2019 talking in their trenches, and hurling abusive epithets at their inveterate enemy, the British.<\/p>\n

\u2018They are splendid shots,\u2019 writes the officer, \u2018and are very cunning despite the fact that that the peepholes in our trenches are concealed, they actually succeed in firing through them time and again.\u00a0 The other day they tried to draw our fire, and locate our sentry by clever display of dummy figures and had we fired our volleys would have been returned tenfold.\u00a0 This dodge, however, like many others, didn\u2019t work.\u2019<\/p>\n

To and From the Trenches – He describes the journey to and from their locations in the trenches as one of their most dangerous experiences.\u00a0 In one case these Canadians have to pass some distance in full view of the German trenches, which are not more than 200 yards away, and although they come and go under cover of darkness bullets whizz around them.\u00a0 The other night the company had only just emerged from the danger zone when the Germans turned a machine gun on it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 [3]<\/a><\/p>\n

* Note: \u201cJack Johnsons\u201d was the term used by British and Canadian soldiers to refer to the big artillery shells which tore up the ground.\u00a0 \u201cWhen a shell hits the ground right and explodes it tears a up hole fully six feet deep and easily twenty feet across.\u00a0 When you were quietly leaving the trenches in the night, and making back towards the base, first thing you know you tumble into one of these big holes.\u00a0 That is when you curse the \u2018Jack Johnsons.\u2019\u00a0 You get some bad falls that way\u2026 These holes are all around the trenches, and in the darkness you cannot see them.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [4]<\/a><\/p>\n

[1]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 War Diary, 14th<\/sup> Canadian Battalion, The Royal Montreal Regiment<\/em>, March 12, 1915.\u00a0 Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa,\u00a0http:\/\/data2.collectionscanada.ca\/e\/e044\/e001089701.jpg<\/a><\/pre>\n
[2]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 http:\/\/www.bac-lac.gc.ca\/eng\/discover\/mass-digitized-archives\/circumstances-death-registers\/Pages\/item.aspx?PageID=48881<\/a><\/pre>\n
[3]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cCanadians in Trenches Want Smokes Badly,\u201d The Montreal Daily Mail<\/em>, Montreal, Quebec, Friday, March 12, 1915, pg. 1, col. 3.<\/pre>\n
[4]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cAnother Ottawa Member of Patricias Invalided Home,\u201d\u00a0 The Ottawa Citizen<\/em>, Saturday, April 3, 1915, pg. 1, col. 1<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Friday, March 12, 1915 In Trenches, Rue\u00a0Petillon The Battalion War Diarist wrote for this day: \u201cQuiet day on our front.\u00a0 Some fighting still going on at Neuve Chapelle.\u00a0 Usual schedule<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-day-in-rmr-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rmrmuseum.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}