1915-05-03hj

One of the most dangerous places for troops fighting on the Western Front was not always in the trenches.

As there were always soldiers in the trenches, there was at least some protection from machine gun shooting from the enemy line.

However, the soldiers in the trenches, although rotated occasionally, still had to be fed, and that was task of the Quartermaster’s staff. To get the food to the trenches, and return, the staff had to go back and forth across open areas, where they were subjected constantly to machine gun and sniper fire.

Hamiltonian Quartermaster Sergeant R.W. Hunt, son of Mr. and Mrs. F. W. Hunt of 121 Emerald street south, was one of those soldiers whose duty required delivery of food to the trenches. He described his experiences in a letter to his parents :

“The Q.M.S. goes into the trenches; in fact, we go up with the rations at night, climb in, distribute same, and then have to climb out again and come back on the road we go in.

“The Germans, evert two or three minutes, send up a star shell which bursts in the air and you can see plainly as daylight for about 800 or 12,000 yards all around, and then immediately they open up on us with the machine gun or rifle fire.

“Of course as soon as we see the shell go up we throw ourselves down or into the mud out of sight. That is how we lost our first two men. They were not down quickly enough.

“We go in at different times each night, so the Germans cannot look for us at a regular period. It’s funny to see, sometimes, when the Germans turn their searchlight on us, and the fellows flop in the mud. We get covered, but no one cares, we are all the same.

“Sometimes they switch the light on you before you expect it, and the only thing we do then is to stand perfectly still and pray they do not see us. Several times when going in, they turned the light on us. We dropped until it passed and then got up and continued forward, and we hardly took four paces when they switched the light back on us, so, as I said before, our only chance in such a case is to stand perfectly still. If anyone moves, zing, bang goes the machine gun and you can hear them all around you.

“Thanks for letters. It is something to look forward t0 (the Canadian mail). Lots of the fellows get English mail, but, of course, I have wait two weeks for the Canadian. In every letter I have received, they say, ‘Suppose you will soon be in the trenches.’ Well, we went in the first time on February 19^th, as I mentioned in previous letters.”¹