through the looking glass - people of the city
Great War remembered A
By GILLIAN SLADE
hundred years ago more than 1,800 soldiers from this region, when Medicine Hat had a population of about 10,000, enlisted to serve
in the First World War, a war that would become known as the Great War, and be remembered for fighting in the trenches.
The trenches that were carved into the soil of battle fields in Europe were about eight or 10 feet deep and had an elevated area that was called the “firing step.”
“They’d step up on that and fire through the openings between sandbags and barbed wire,” said Wesley Krause, volunteer curator of the South Alberta Light Horse Regimental Museum at Patterson Armoury in Medicine Hat.
The sides of the trenches were sometimes lined with corrugated iron but often not.
“There are a lot of reports where the rain and artillery barrage caused the walls to collapse into the trench,” said Krause.
The First World War had probably the worst conditions on the western front for fighting a battle. There was a report of it raining 75 out of 100 days, said Krause.
Soldiers had great coats and one thin blanket but initially they did not have steel helmets to provide head protection.
“They had their field caps or wore their Stetsons,” said Krause. “It was not until April 1916 that they were issued steel helmets and this probably contributed to the high number of casualties.”
A battalion of a thousand men living in a trench also needed to eat and go to the bathroom.
Krause points to an example of a trench in the museum at Patterson Armoury where wood planks conceal a deeper trench that would have been used for sewage. All the smells would have wafted up to soldiers in the confines of the trench.
“The 31st regiment in 1915 were in the trenches for three months, essentially
84 2014 REPORT ON SOUTHEAST ALBERTA
without a break and suffered more loss of life,” said Krause. “Of about 2,500 to 3,000 soldiers there were 900 who died.”
A sergeant earned $1.50 a day, corporals $1.20 and privates $1.10.
Capt. Frank Pott was one of the first to leave Medicine Hat for training in Valcartier, Quebec, before sailing for England. He encountered his first battle at Ypres in Belgium, said Grace Christie, who has been researching Medicine Hat’s First World War soldiers for the Esplanade’s exhibit to open in August.
“He wrote a letter to his wife about his life in the trenches,” said Christie. “After she received the letter she was notified that he had died.”
Medicine Hat’s Middleton family had a total of eight sons and cousins who enlisted for the First World War, said Annetta Lozo who also remembers Gotthelf (George) Herrmann who enlisted in February 1916 and was injured at the Battle of Passchendaele.
“I remember him being around the Royal Canadian Legion,” said Lozo. “He died in September 1972 at the age of 77.”
We don’t know who the individual was who designed the trenches but it was a system used by the British and Germans.
“Digging-in made sense on the Western Front because they were relying on artillery,” said Krause.
While in the trench there was a measure of protection but to attack and move forward soldiers faced significant danger.
“No man's land - the area between the Canadian or British trenches and the German trenches - was full of craters and when it rained they’d fill up creating little lakes all over the place,” said Krause. “If they staged an attack they had to crawl out of the trench, get through a barbed wire entanglement, cross no-mans land, and get to the barbed wire in front of the Germans’ trenches.”
That almost 20 per cent of Medicine Hat’s
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