“I need gentlemen of character and courage to inspire these men to their duty as soldiers. I need smart men who can make the right decisions regardless of circumstance. Do I have one of these men standing before me, Lieutenant?”
-Lt. Col B.A. Sinclair, “Killing is a Sin” Ch. V
There would be
nobody on their right flank; they were the end of the line. This objective was the extreme right edge of
the advance. At the opposite end, the
company from the 102nd Battalion was fortunate in that they would be
moving forward to secure the left flank with positions already held. Not so for the men of ‘B’ Company, 46th
Battalion. Their fate had placed them
here- needing to take this stretch of Regina Trench at a point most likely to
attract strong counter-attacks and hold it- orders were to hold at all cost[1]-
while ‘D’ Company moved up and worked to extend the captured trench back to
existing Canadian lines.
A staggering
majority of ‘B’ Company’s compliment had never gone into battle before, and
that included two of the three officers who had been selected to lead it. The company’s other officers, some NCO’s and
ordinary soldiers had been purposefully held back- “left out of battle” was the
phrase- in order to preserve structure should the attack prove disastrously
costly. For the men going forward, they
would have to have implicit trust, bordering on faith, in leadership that knew
not much more than what they did about what to expect. Lieutenants Lowe, Dewar and Copp were placed
in a position of enormous responsibility.
They had to complete the task given to ‘B’ Company in such a way as to
be worthy of their men’s blind trust with the knowledge that any failure would
weigh heavier upon them than anyone else.
All of this was theirs to take upon, without any greater understanding
of what to expect then had the men they were meant to lead.
The opening
quote, taken from Chapter V of my novel “Killing is a Sin” describes in fiction the actual dilemma facing Battalion
commanders such as Colonel Sinclair would face in reality. Building an army from near nothing would be
one accomplishment for Canada. Finding
“men of character and courage” to lead it would be another. For our posterity, it is fortunate that such
men- men such as Lowe, Dewar and Copp- were present to fill this need.
Each of the
three officers with ‘B’ Company on the night of the attack had at least some
pre-war experience. Lowe and Copp with
two and three years in the Active Militia respectively. Dewar, a Scot by birth had been five years
with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.
Lt. Dewar had
been with the CEF the longest. He’d
joined as a private soldier at the outset of war and shipped out with the First
Contingent in October, 1914. Illness, in
particular a hernia, delayed his deployment to France. He would remain in England, assigned to
training depots and accelerating through non-commissioned appointments;
becoming a Company Sergeant-Major a short while before being granted a
commission and an assignment to active duty with the 46th Battalion
prior to its embarkation to France in September 1916. Although Lt. Dewar was the longest serving,
his commission came later than Lt. Lowe’s, who would be placed in command of
‘B’ Company. Perhaps this longevity in
service was the consideration to place Dewar with the responsibility of
establishing ‘B’ Company’s forward blocking post.
What ‘B’ Company
had been asked to accomplish was quite daring.
It was a night attack, with the company spaced in four waves of a
platoon each. The men would have to cross
no-man’s land undetected by the enemy and as close as possible to the covering
barrage. That they were able to
accomplish this, a complex manoeuvre with precise coordination with artillery
they could neither see nor communicate with directly with having made all
preparations to do so within the seven hours between final orders and Zero-hour
bears a good deal of reflection. Even if
things were to go without a hitch, such an endeavour’s chance of success was
reliant completely on the officers leading the attack, the NCO’s marshalling
the men and the level of proficiency attained by the rank and file in all the
moments which had brought them all to this point.
As it was, not
everything went without a hitch. It is,
in fact, when things don’t go to plan
that real leadership is tested. When the
barrage lifted at nine minutes past Zero[2]
“it was not concentrated over a sufficiently narrow area to allow of the
attacking party of entering the objective.”[3] Jumping off right then put the men to risk of
falling under their own barrage; while waiting a further five minutes[4]
gave the Germans defending Regina Trench that much time to recover and prepare
to receive the attack. Having the men
wait was one thing; hesitating in making a decision in either case was another
thing altogether.
“They therefore
waited for the next lift,” it was later reported, and as expected this delay
worked in favour of the defenders.
“Parties of the enemy put up a strong resistance.”[5]
Lt. Lowe’s
presence was later praised by his C.O. Lt. Col Dawson as being instrumental to
the success of this part of the attack.
Lowe “so animated his men,” Dawson would write, that the position
captured “was quickly placed in a state of defence.” Lowe’s constancy throughout the unfolding day
“displayed a magnificent spirit of bravery and coolness under fire.”[6]
Lt. Lowe would be awarded the Military Cross for his efforts.[7]
Lt. Dewar, the
ex-Borderer quickly established his outpost as consolidation began, and
prudently shifted it closer to the trench lines when it was apparent that
artillery fire was dropping too short.
Dewar himself caught a piece of shrapnel and was shortly afterward
evacuated. He would not return to the
front, remaining with a training unit in England after convalescing from his
wound. Lt. Lowe would also be taken out
of the line the following month, due to chronic appendicitis.
By year’s end,
only Lt. Copp remained of the three ‘B’ Company officers who went forward on
that night. He would be wounded the
following spring in the weeks after Vimy Ridge; but not before earning the
Military Cross himself. “In spite of
heavy fire,” his citation reads, “he supervised the establishment of posts, and
later seized advanced ground which he held with great determination.”[8] Like Lt. Dewar, Copp would not return to
action after recovering.
Lowe, however,
would come back to the 46th Battalion, his appendix no longer a
concern, sporting his MC and a deserving promotion to Captain in time to take
part in operations at Vimy. Captain Lowe
continued to display the qualities which inspired those he led to follow
him. That August, “Captain Lowe and a
bombing party raided an enemy M.G. emplacement…and succeeded in securing 14
prisoners.”[9] His conspicuous leadership was, ironically,
his undoing. The Battalion’s War Diary
concludes on 22 August 1917 with the entry “Captain Lowe was sniped during this
raid.”
[1] 10th Canadian Infantry Brigade Operations
Order No. 22 10 November 1916
[3] 10th Canadian Infantry Brigade “Report on
Operations 10/11 November” War Diary, November 1916 Appendix C1
[6] Dawson, H.J. Lt. Col, “A No. 120 ‘Recommendations’” to
OC 10 CIB 14 November 1916
[7] Supplement to the London Gazette No. 29898 9 January
1917 pg. 465
[9] War Diary Entry, 46th Battalion, 22 August
1917
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