A. W. Woods: The chaos of the front

PART SIX OF A SERIES ON SAINT MARGARET’S AND THE GREAT WAR

I get the impression that chaplains operated somewhat outside of the normal chain of command. They were honorary captains or lieutenant-colonels. Not that they would be insubordinate. But an army is a massively regimented, hierarchical, orderly system, in which everyone precisely knows their role. Except that nobody in the First World War seemed to have a very clear idea of what the role of the chaplain ought to be, apart from giving Christian burials to the dead. In effect what this meant is that they had very little direction in how to discharge their duties. The one thing they had running in their favour was low expectations from both the brass and the men. But they were largely making it up as they went along. And this meant that the role perhaps differed from battalion to battalion. 

A great deal of a padre’s work was tending to injured men. That would not happen in the trenches, where a padre would simply have been in the way of the fighting and the first aiders. In a letter home during the war, A. W. Woods explained the system that brought the injured back from the front: stretcher bearers give first aid and bring the wounded man to the Regimental Aid Post, where he is examined, his details recorded, he is given hot coffee [often by the padre, from what I gather], and sent on to the Advanced Field Ambulance Dressing Station, from there to the Casualty Clearing Stations, and finally from there to the Base Hospitals - depending on the severity of the injury. “The whole system works like an endless chain propelled by an unseen power; there is no confusion under the most severe stress. Every ounce of energy is used to the best advantage, nothing being wasted, the thing moves as in a circle.” And in a lecture after the war, he explained that there needed to be chaplains at every step in this process. “In the larger engagements 1,500 or 1,600 men might pass through those stations in a very short time. The chaplain was on duty, day and night, until relieved. There was no cessation of his duty.”

Most of the chaplain’s set duties - comforting the wounded and burying the dead - would be performed back of the line. And chaplains were not billeted in the trenches, but a little ways back, perhaps with the adjutants at the battle headquarters, or perhaps they might find some accommodation for themselves nearby. There were clearly some commanding officers who expected the padre to stay there, where he belonged, away from the front and out of the way. That would mean that the padre would have very little meaningful contact with the men, unless and until they were injured. Certainly Canon Scott’s commanding officer forbade him to go to the trenches, and Scott’s memoir has several anecdotes of dodging the General in order to get up to the front and spend time with the men. So the extent to which an individual padre fraternized with the men in the trenches was both a matter of the initiative of the padre and the permission of the brass. George Wells’ commanding officer while he was attached to the Strathcona Horse, Col. Archie MacDonnell, visited the line every night. “He allowed me to go with him, and I pretended that I was not a bit afraid; but believe me, it was pretence. If he noticed any weakness on my part, however, he never mentioned it. When a man died, the Colonel would report it to Headquarters and order that the body be brought back for burial, as it was too dangerous to do it while action was going on, and I would conduct the service as soon as possible after that.”

After Woods had returned from the war, at a reception for him at St. Margaret’s, Archbishop Matheson gave a speech. “Testimonies of his gallantry in carrying the wounded men out of the trenches were quoted by the Archbishop from letters he had received from the boys in which they referred to him not as a padre but as a pal.” So Woods was clearly one of those chaplains who, with or without the consent of the brass, spent time in the trenches with the men. And actually we know this from multiple sources. He gives a wonderful account of Christmas, 1916, which I will post in its entirety. And in a lecture after the war, Woods described his communion services in the trenches, done in little groups because of the danger of gathering in any greater numbers. “In these little gatherings of five, six, ten men we had men of every religious denomination. There was absolutely no distinction made in denomination in the front lines. You couldn’t tell by the clothes what denomination the padre administering spiritual comfort to the men belonged to and the men did not care. At the second battle of Ypres, I held the communion service in a reserve trench. Men of all religious denominations were represented in the recipients. Then the boche started to shell us.”

The second battle of Ypres, which Woods mentions here, was hugely consequential. The 8th Battalion had been deployed to France in February 1915, and in April 1915 they were moved to the Ypres Salient, a bite in the front line, where the Allied line bulged into the German line around the town of Ypres. The German forces very much wanted to remove this bite and straighten the line. On April 22, they released 160 tons of chlorine gas, forming a poisonous cloud 6 km long and almost 1 km deep. It was the first gas attack of this kind, and it had not been anticipated. The soldiers had no equipment to protect against it. The gas was heavier than air, and so it was particularly effective at seeping into trenches and foxholes. The worst-hit by the gas were the French to the north of the Canadian Division, and they were forced to flee from their trenches, which in turn forced the Canadians to extend their line to protect their rear flank. Then on April 24, at 4.00 am, the German forces released a second attack of chlorine gas, and this time it landed directly on the 8th Battalion, as well as the 15th. 

The chlorine gas triggered one’s lungs to produce fluid, and men would effectively drown. One of the 8th Battalion’s officers, Harold Mathews (he’s seated two to the right of Lipsett in the Valcartier photo), described the effect: “It is impossible for me to give a real idea of the terror and horror spread among us by this filthy loathsome pestilence. It was not, I think, the fear of death or anything supernatural but the great dread that we could not stand the fearful suffocation sufficiently to be each in our proper places and be able to resist to the uttermost the attack which we felt sure must follow, and so hang on at all costs to the trench that we had been ordered to hold.” A. W. Woods wrote of the confusion of the scene: “The chaos of the front was immeasurable, with conflicting orders, German troops behind Canadian lines, intense barrages and the gas attack which knocked out many of the commanding officers.” 

The second battle of Ypres was one of the early indications that this war would not be a gentlemanly series of skirmishes but a horror unlike the world had yet seen or imagined. And the chaplain to those first casualties of this new kind of horror, who was there with them, who heavily felt the responsibility for their spiritual welfare and comfort, was A. W. Woods.

Many of the casualties were evacuated to the 2nd Canadian Stationary Hospital, which had been set up in a grand hotel in the beach town of Le Touquet, where the sole chaplain was one George Anderson Wells. He later wrote, “We had hardly recovered from our strenuous labours with casualties from the first Battle of Ypres, when we had to undertake the same heartbreaking task for those of the second Battle of Ypres. This time, however, there was a big difference. In the first battle we had dealt with practically all English and Scottish troops; in the second they were nearly all Canadian. And now there was a new kind of casualty. For the first time in warfare, a deadly, poisonous gas was used, to the surprise and horror of everyone. No one expected such a thing, and no one was prepared for it.”

The second battle of Ypres was, as I say, hugely consequential. It had a galvanizing effect on Canada as a nation; the public was motivated to raise a Second Contingent to go support the First. It also had a galvanizing effect upon the First Canadian Division, and certainly upon the 8th Battalion. It must also have been hugely consequential for Woods. I have no doubt that it was a prime contributor to his shattered health - recall that it was said his health was “broken by the ravages of gas and trench fever.” The effects of the chlorine gas were very often lifelong.

Woods probably didn’t live in the trenches, but he did suffer alongside the privates in the trenches. And the bond that he formed with them - he calls them ‘his boys’, and in turn they say he was more a pal than a padre - without a doubt comes from this shared suffering. He was in his 50s, he was older than many of their parents. All the other older men were officers giving them orders. The chaplain - and only the chaplain - stood outside this structure of command. Woods would bring them gifts, like reading material. “The boys liked love stories best of all.” He recounted after the war that “It helped a chaplain out a great deal, in approaching a man to have a magazine, cigarettes, chocolate, or a dry pair of socks, to give him.” Those of course are the very items that the St. Margaret’s women were sending to the front, via Woods. So I think we can infer that the parish was a big part of supplying Woods with these few comforts for the boys in the trenches. What Woods was delivering to those boys was not just the socks but the motherly affection that went into making that pair of socks to send to some boy with wet, freezing feet, in the soupy trenches in Flanders. Woods sums it up: “The chaplain was the general adviser. Never must he be an officer. He was the friend.”