On the Fringe of the Great Fight | Page 3

we woke to find ourselves riding quietly at anchor in the sunny harbour of Gaspé, with all the other transports anchored about us, together with four long grey gunboats,--our escort upon the road to our great adventure.
The brilliant afternoon sun of a typical Canadian Autumn day shone down upon Gaspé basin. Idly we lounged about the decks, gazing at the shores with their little white fishermen's cottages, or at the thirty odd troopships, and the four grey gunboats which studded the harbour. The surface of the water was rippled by a light breeze and all was quiet and peaceful in the shelter of that sunny haven. Even the gulls, gorged with the waste food from the ships, swam lazily about or flapped idly hither and thither.
My gaze had fixed itself upon the nearest of the lean, grey gunboats. As I watched, the sleeping greyhound seemed to move; in another moment the seeming illusion gave way to certainty--it was moving; gradually its pace accelerated and it slipped quietly out toward the open sea. A second gunboat followed, then a third, all making for the open. Immediately we were all excitement, for the rumour had been current that we might be there for several days. But the rumour was speedily disproved as the rattle of anchor chains became audible from the transports nearest the harbour mouth, and one by one they followed their little grey guides; and so, at three of the clock on October the third, 1914, the First Canadian Contingent with guns, ammunition, horses and equipment, left Gaspé en route to the great war.
Gradually method evolved itself out of apparent chaos. Three gunboats took the lead and the transports fell into line about a thousand yards from one another, so that eventually three lines were formed of about a dozen in each and the whole fleet moved forward into the Atlantic. The shores of Gaspé, dotted with white cottages; yellow stubble fields; hills red and purple with autumnal foliage--these were our last pictures of Canada--truly the last that many of us were ever to see, and we looked upon them, our hearts filled with emotions that these scenes had never given rise to before. Our ruddy Canadian emblem, the maple leaf, gave its characteristic tinge to the receding shores--a colour to be seen often on the field of battle, but never in the foliage of a European landscape.
We were making history; the great epoch-making enterprise of our young country was taking place--an undertaking that would go down in the annals of the Empire of Great Britain as a great incident of the period when the young cubs raced to the assistance of the old lion in her hour of need--this we realized. And yet it was hard to realize that we were actually fortunate enough to be taking part in an expedition, the like of which never was before, and probably never will be again. Never before had there been gathered together a fleet of transports of such magnitude--a fleet consisting of 33 transports carrying 33,000 men, 7,000 horses and all the motors, waggons and equipment necessary to place in the field not only a complete infantry division, and a cavalry brigade, but in addition to provide for the necessary reserves.
At night we steamed along like phantom ships. All windows and port holes were carefully screened so that one might walk the deck and see not a single ray of light to reveal the whereabouts of the accompanying vessels.
Off Newfoundland as our three lines of ships were ploughing along, about a mile and a half apart, we picked up H.M.S. "Glory" which took a position about ten miles away on our right. Our ship, the "Franconia," the flagship of the fleet, had the headquarter staff, the 90th Regiment of Winnipeg, and a number of nurses on board, and she held place in the centre of the middle line.
How an orderly fleet could be immediately dis-organized was well demonstrated one morning when our whistle blew sharply several times "Man Overboard." As we slowed down, with throbbing engines reversed churning the ocean into foam, we could see the tiny speck (a man's head) floating by. While our lifeboat was being lowered and the man was being rescued, the three lines of transports buckled and the ships see-sawed to right and left in their efforts to avoid collisions.
The man proved to be a painter who, unobserved, had fallen off the "Royal Edward" in front of us, and but for the vigilance of the lookout on our ship, would undoubtedly have perished.
There seemed to be about a thousand nurses aboard the Franconia--the real number was about a hundred but they multiplied by their ubiquity; they swarmed everywhere; sometimes they filled the lounge so that the poor Major or Colonel could not get in for