Battle of Leopold Canal, Part 2

Then finally at about 4 in the morning, 3 or 4 in the morning I got the word, the North Shores are coming to paddle your troops across. Now the North Shores had paddles and no they left their rifles on one side and they had the paddles and they paddled these K-Pog boats, canvas boats and K-Pog boats across. The Winnipeg Rifles got in them and then the Germans had come back. The ones that had either not been burned, because they were too well dug in, or the ones that had been sort of scared away, they came back and they were firing at us. But it's called enfilade, enfilade fire, which is sideways fire. So they had placed machine guns lengthways to the canals, so they could fire down the canal and shoot the hell out of us. So we lost a lot of men crossing that canal. How many I don't know. We had sixty some going over, maybe we lost twenty. But we got across, and when we got across we ran into the Regina Rifles who had gone ahead on our left and the Canadian/Scottish were on our right and we were in the middle. So we ran into the Regina Rifles on our left and I said, "What kind of a do is this? " And they said, "It's shaky as hell and we don't know if we can hold it. The Germans are keep countering attack us". And I said, "Oh my God". And he said, and I said, "Well I'll dig in. Where should I dig in? " He said, "There's lots of slit trenches here". He said, "You might have to throw some dead Germans out of them". So I did and we dug in and occupied these slit trenches that the Germans had. And the Germans put in about three attacks, between four and first light I guess. Then the next day was quiet. We were sort of regrouping and what not, that would be the 7th. On the 8th, they sent up, we needed reinforcements. A company, an infantry company is about 120. I was down to about thirty men, so I couldn't hold the ground. And so I said so and they said okay we got some reinforcements. So that's the first time we saw any conscripts. They sent up some conscripts to us. Good guys! Wanna fight! No choice, but wanted to fight. Most of them French speaking, and I could speak a little french so we were alright there. So they came up the next day, that would be the 3rd, the 6th, 7th, 8th, that would be the 9th was we got reinforced. Then we went over the afternoon of the 9th and occupied these, more of these slit trenches, filled them up with new troops and had a fairly quiet night. They fired a bit at us, but it wasn't really bad. Then the next day, the 10th, the colonel called me and he said, you know, "Have you got Grazen on your map? " I said, "Yeah." He said, "You're being fired on from there." I said, "You're telling me, sir." I didn't call him sir, I called him sunray. "You're telling me, sunray," that was the name for the colonel. And he said, "I want you to put in an attack for this Grazen." I said, "Okay fine." So I got a hold of three or four of my best men and said, "Now we'll go down this road as far as we can and dig in, that's the first step." Then after we had dug in and we got a good look at the ground then Sgt. Magichi will be with us and Magichi will say, "Okay, bring up the rest of your men." In the meantime, I stayed in the slit trench behind, where I could organize the troops who were coming up. So Magichi went up the road and then I got a signal from him, "come ahead," so I brought up about ten or fifteen reinforcements. There was a road with polderland on each side flooded so you could only get so many men up. I got up there and as soon as we got in, they fired every damn thing at us you could think of.