God's Sparrows. Philip Child
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inability of the massed artillery to completely shatter the succeeding lines of German trenches and artillery left much of the advancing infantry exposed, and they were cut down in waves. From July 1 to November 18, 1916, the Somme would claim an astonishing toll: nearly 480,000 British and Commonwealth men were killed, and just shy of 800,000 were wounded.
One of the many costly lessons of the Somme was the realization that greater artillery effectiveness needed to be brought to bear against the German lines, and that better artillery tactics, particularly an emphasis on counter-battery fire, needed to be developed if the Allies were to win the war.
It was against this historical backdrop that Philip Child, then an eighteen-year-old student in his second year studying arts at the University of Toronto, decided to join the artillery.
This photo of Philip Child was likely taken before he shipped out to England in 1917.
Philip Child Fonds, Local History and Archives Department, Hamilton Public Library.
Like many university students in Canada during the war, Philip Child began his military career by joining the school’s Officer Training Corps. The University of Toronto, under the guidance of its president, Robert Falconer, set up a military training program in which students would learn basic military and leadership skills while still enrolled in their regular academic programs. As the war progressed, so too did the involvement of Canada’s universities; they provided technical courses for soldiers not otherwise affiliated with the university, covering topics such as engineering, ballistics, and mathematics in a program called the Overseas Training Company. Philip Child joined the OSTC in the fall of 1916, and spent the first two months of term refreshing the mathematical skills he would need to be an artillery officer.
In November of 1916, Child joined the 14th Battery of the Canadian Field Artillery (CFA) and was granted the rank of provisional lieutenant while he underwent training at the School of Artillery in Kingston. He qualified as a lieutenant in artillery in March 1917, but unfortunately for Child, the 14th Battery CFA had been absorbed into two other artillery units and disbanded as a result of losses sustained in France. So, when Child signed his attestation papers on April 23, 1917, officially making him a member of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, he was caught in administrative limbo, waiting for the military bureaucracy to send him to a Canadian artillery battery with an opening for a junior officer. None were immediately available with the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), but there were opportunities in the Imperial Army. As British subjects, Canadians could serve in the British military, and Philip Child jumped at the chance. He was discharged from the CEF and was accepted as a candidate for a commission in the British Army.
When he arrived in England at the end of June 1917, Philip Child joined the 28th Battalion, the London Regiment, 2nd Artists Rifles as a private, but this was merely for administrative purposes. Within three days, he was transferred to the 2nd reserve brigade of the Royal Garrison Artillery Territorial Force as a gunner (the artillery equivalent of a private) and sent to the Royal Artillery Officer Cadet School at Trowbridge, Wiltshire. On December 2, 1917, his training was complete, and he was commissioned as an officer. He was now Second Lieutenant Philip Child, Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA).
Philip Child in the uniform of the Royal Garrison Artillery, taken in London, circa 1917–18. It was taken either on leave during 1918 (which is most likely) or before he was sent to France.
Philip Child Fonds, Local History and Archives Department, Hamilton Public Library.
The Royal Garrison Artillery was officially created in 1899 as a branch of the Royal Artillery; armed with heavy guns, they were tasked with coastal and fort defence throughout the British Empire. Typically firing from fixed positions, the RGA was the artillery branch that brought overwhelming firepower to the battle, while the other branches, the Royal Horse Artillery and Royal Field Artillery, stressed mobility and were armed with smaller artillery pieces.
Philip Child arrived in France on January 13, 1918, and joined the 262nd Siege Battery of the RGA. Siege batteries were deployed well behind the front line trenches, equipped with heavy howitzers firing 6", 8", or 9.2" shells, and their mission was to destroy enemy artillery emplacements, supply routes, railway lines, strong points, and ammunition stores. The 262nd was equipped with six 8" howitzers. These artillery pieces weighed between 8.74 to 13.5 tons (depending on the model) and would fire a two-hundred-pound , high-explosive shell in a high trajectory to a range of between ten and eleven kilometres. A siege battery would have five officers and one hundred and seventy-seven men, along with a hundred or so horses for transport. The guns themselves would be moved with a combination of Holt tractors and horsepower. Four of these siege batteries would make up a heavy artillery brigade; during Child’s service in 1918 the 262nd Siege Battery was part of the 54th Heavy Artillery Brigade (HAB).
As a “subaltern,” or junior officer, Philip Child was the officer in charge of a section of two of the battery’s six guns. His epic poem of the Great War, The Wood of the Nightingale (1965), contains a first person account of him issuing orders for the battery to fire:
I hear my voice. I hear it giving orders:
Deflection from the zero line, the range,
The fuse – worked out before the dance began.
And – Fire when ready, number one. My voice
Sounds calm and matter of fact … and facts are facts.[7]
8" howitzers of 135th Siege Battery at La Houssoye on the Somme, August 25, 1916.
National Army Museum, London.
The early months of 1918 were relatively quiet for the 54th HAB, as they were moved in and around the Arras and Amiens sectors in northeast France. That sense of calm would be shattered on the morning of March 21, 1918, when the German Army began their spring campaign, the Kaiserschlacht or Ludendorff Offensive.
When the Russians negotiated an exit from the war on their Eastern Front, the Germans were able to transfer resources to the west, and consequently held a temporary numerical advantage over the Allies. Eager to attack before the Americans could effectively deploy their military might, the Germans threw everything they had at the Allies, hoping to drive the British back to the Channel ports and then force the French to surrender. The attack drove deep into Allied territory, and the German advance captured more ground than at any point since 1914.
Philip Child and the 262nd Siege Battery were then deployed in Vaulx-Vraucourt , up the Noreuil valley, which had been christened “Death Valley” by the troops. The Germans opened up with a tremendous artillery barrage just after 04:30, and within minutes Child and his men were responding to SOS flares from troops in the front trenches. Communications were cut between the forward observation officers, the battery’s guns, and the officer commanding the battery, Major du Neufville. At 05:15, the left and right sections of the battery were pounded by German artillery fire and each section took heavy casualties; German 5.9" shells were raining in at a rate of about three a minute, but the battery somehow maintained their rate of fire, their shelling being the lifeline for the overwhelmed infantry.
Just before about 09:00, Philip Child was hit by shrapnel, and though his wounds were light he was momentarily knocked unconscious and evacuated to a first aid post for treatment. Shortly after, the intensity of the German artillery fire increased, and the battery command post had to be abandoned. His wounds bandaged, Child returned to the fight shortly before the Germans overwhelmed the British trenches in front of them. The gunners reported German machine gun fire was coming over, and there was hand-to-hand fighting in a trench on their right flank a thousand yards away. By 12:30, RGA Lewis gunners were defending the battery’s guns from direct German infantry assault.
The major went forward to assess the situation, and seeing no British infantry in front of him, with vast numbers of the