The Trenches and the Homefront
The Trenches and the Homefront
An excerpt from a sermon preached at the evening service of Nov 15, 2020
The Second Battle of Ypres was the Canadian troops’ real introduction to the trenches. Soldiers didn’t live in the trenches for months at a time, the battalions in a brigade would be rotated through trench duty, often one week in the trenches, two or three weeks behind the line doing physical labour. But a week at a time in the trenches was dangerous in many different ways. The enemy trenches were perhaps the width of a football pitch away. Sandbags were piled up on either side of the trench, and you needed to take care to never stick your head above this line of sandbags because a sniper was liable to take you out. Often the sleeping accommodations were little alcoves dug into the sides of the trenches. But you never really slept properly while in the trenches, and never bathed or had a proper change of clothing. The toilets were open latrines that were liable to flood during rain. And the whole place was infested with lice, which thrived on the filthy men, and flies and rats, which thrived on the petrifying corpses of horses, farm animals, and men. All of this meant that the mud in the trenches wasn’t just mud. It a petrie dish of disease. You could hardly concoct a more unhygienic environment if you tried.
Now the men were wearing ill-fitting government issue boots, and marching to and fro. They rub. The men got sores on their feet, and their feet were immersed in this disease-infested sludge for a week at a time, without any facilities for bathing. Men started losing their feet to gangrene in appalling numbers. And in the winter, men would go to sleep with wet feet and wake up to find their boots frozen solid, and their feet severely frost-bitten. Trench foot posed a very serious danger. Arthur Currie, the commanding officer of A. W. Woods’ brigade, recounted: “I remember very well the first casualty train I saw in France. There were 300 casualties on the train and nearly 90% were suffering from trench feet.” According to Currie, the best and really only solution to trench foot was a daily change of socks. And this could be accomplished if the men had enough socks to wear them in rotation and wash them after a single use. This generally could be accomplished - if the men each had four pairs of socks. The government supplied two. Why the government couldn’t find 2 more pairs of socks per man, I don’t know. But it fits a wider pattern; the Canadian government failed to furnish the soldiers with the sleeping accommodations that the British soldiers got. It failed to furnish them with rifles that actually functioned properly in battle conditions. In most such cases, the fault ultimately lay with the Canadian Minister of Militia, Sam Hughes, whose gross incompetence was a function of his malignant narcissism. For whatever reason, the Canadian government provided men two pairs of socks, when the men needed a minimum of four if they were going to ward off trench foot. Appeals went out to the home front: knit socks!
Back in Winnipeg, at Saint Margaret’s parish, some of the women formed a Queen Mary’s Guild, and started to knit. And not just socks, but also caps and wristlets. Over the course of the war, they spent $300 on wool - this at a time when a house cost about $3000. Every month they would send a package of socks overseas, often sending them to A. W. Woods for him to distribute. They mailed 450 pairs of wool socks to the parish men serving on the front. In addition, they knitted 100 pairs of socks for the Red Cross. And in addition to this the parish donated a further 125 pairs of wool socks for the soldiers, and another 125 pairs of socks for the Red Cross. Altogether the parish sent at least 800 pairs of wool socks overseas. And in addition to this, the women of the parish were collecting larger garments for the Red Cross, collecting bedding for the special hospitals that had been set up because of the Spanish Flu, collecting money for donations to the Red Cross. And in addition to this they sent $25 dollars quarterly to A. W. Woods as a budget for comforts for the men in his brigade. This, he probably spent on cigarettes and chocolate. But back to those socks. They’re just socks. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to undervalue a pair of really great wool socks. But up against the scale of human disaster that was unfolding, socks seem an absurdly insignificant offering. But they weren’t insignificant to the men for whom those socks were the difference between keeping or losing their feet. And this image - the parishioners back in Wolseley, knitting socks, and A. W. Woods distributing the socks, both sending them to the St Margaret’s men on the front in their various battalions, and giving them out to the men in his own brigade - this image now adds another dimension to the question about whether the church should want to have a witness in Hades. Woods was being supported, both in prayer and materially, by the parish.
What is a parish - as a parish - supposed to do in the face of a global catastrophe? A parish is bound to feel helpless, because it is not a principality or a power. And a parish cannot transcend its situation, cannot gain bird’s-eye view of the working of the principalities and powers. Saint Margaret’s parish couldn’t see through the view of the war and the circumstances of the war that they were offered; didn’t know that some of the reported German atrocities were true and that others were manufactured in London for the consumption of the voting public. A parish is merely a collective of faithful people who are attendant to their Lord, a Lord who descended to Hell to take the gospel there, too. What can they do? Pray continually; do acts of mercy; clothe the naked - for they are taught that to do this for the least of these is to do it for their Lord. What can a parish - as a parish - do in the face of a global catastrophe? In 1915, they prayed, they raised money to send to Woods, they donated clothing and linens, and they knitted. They knitted like their sons’ lives depended on it. For A. W. Woods, who had been swept up into this conflagration that had erupted from the collision of the world’s powers, and whose commitment to the men kept him there, in the inferno, the parish back in Wolseley was an anchor of hope and peace.
In November 1915, Woods sent a letter to a parishioner back in Winnipeg. At this point he had been overseas just over a year, and the Second Battle of Ypres had been succeeded by other battles - Festubert, Givenchy - but mostly by month after month of trench warfare:
Dear Mr. Oxton, Will you kindly convey to the Members of the Vestry my sincere good wishes for a bright and happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. I pray that God’s love and God’s peace may be in their homes and prosper all their undertakings. Words cannot express the gratitude I feel for all they have done during the past year, and sincerely hope that brighter days are in store for the near future. It is a great disappointment to me that I am unable to be with my parishioners this winter. My duty lies here with my boys in the trenches. But I do not cease to pray that God may abundantly bless your every effort in His name.
I am, faithfully yours, A. W. Woods.