Wilfred D. "Dick" Ellis speaking about communications and transportation

Wilfred D. "Dick" Ellis speaking about communications and transportation

To hear veteran Wilfred D. "Dick" Ellis click below.

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We not only did a lot of survey work there, but were doing an awful lot of topography; getting up on hills and making sketches of the surrounding country, testing the speed of rivers by throwing in a cigarette box or something and watching it go down the stream and find out what the speed of the river was, testing the little bridges and seeing how much weight they could carry. If a field gun or something went over could it carry the weight and things like that, you see. And we did an awful lot of that kind of thing, and riding around the country to condition our muscles so that we wouldn't get stale. And we were issued with shorts for the first time, and it was beautiful riding around that part of Sussex and so on, we had a marvelous time.

I was one of the unfortunate few who was kept 20 months in England. I was an expert in a good many things. I was reading Morse at 30 words a minute, for one thing, and that's as fast as you can write it in long-hand. I was an instructor in musketry, in signaling of any kind, whether it was heliographs, or Lucas lamp, or tapper, or flag - no matter how you send it- upside down, inside out, I could still read it and teach it. And of course the heliograph was a very difficult instrument. And we had to learn all the different parts of a telescope, and all the workings of our field telephone sets, and how to lay out the wiring, which was just plain enamel, thin wire with black enamel on it, and where the ground sprite was the ground, and you had to know how to service the things and keep them in good running order. Well, we got to be quite expert and not only that we were in bombing too, we did a lot of bombing.

We had been up that night, it was New Year's Eve, 1917. I know because it was the 31st of December, 1917. And we had been putting up barb wire entanglements and we'd been banging in the posts, right. But we had some screw irons and eyelets and so on that we could screw into the ground but we ran out of those and we had to use posts, wooden posts, with a shotgun point on them and bang them in with a mallot. We put a sandbag on the top to deaden the sound, because the Germans would know exactly what we were doing.

And every once in a while I'd hear a bzzz of a rifle shot coming off, and we had just left one of these posts and one of them ricocheted off and went bzzz all over the place there. And the sergeant I was working with from the Engineers said, "That was a close call". So we went on with the work, and we had put the main three lines across and were putting on the apron, which goes diagonally and then cross-ways as well, on both sides. So it's a pretty difficult thing to climb over. In fact you have to shell them apart in order to get the men through. And I was leaning, stooping down on the ground with this heavy reel of wire between my legs, with a pole going through the reel. All of a sudden I fell over backwards, and there was a shell hole behind me and as I said it was the 31st of December and there was a thin coating of ice on it, and it was filled with water underneath and of course I fell through the ice. The sergeant, known as the "old man", said "man hit."

Well I scrambled out and was soaking wet and shivering cold and I said "Oh, shut up you fool," I said, "I'm not hit." And he said "Oh yes you are." So I felt around and I couldn't feel anything, I was shivering and wet and soaking wet and miserable and I couldn't find anything. Then I tried to straighten my right leg, and I said "Uh oh, there it is, I guess."

So, one of our officers came over, Harold Featherly, he was a Lieutenant, and a marvelous gentleman, he said "What's the matter, Dick?" He remembered me because he had been one of our officers in the 4th Div. Cyclists in Canada in the first place. I said "I guess I got one in the knee, sir." And he said "Well, then, let's have your jack knife." So I gave him my jack knife and he slit my riding breeches down the side and pulled me back and there was a hole. So he detailed a couple of chaps off to help me to a field dressing station.

Prior to that though, he went over and said "Where's you rifle?" And I said "Over there, sir, leaning against the apron of the wire." So he went over and looked at the rifle and opened the breech, to make sure it wasn't a self-inflicted wound. That's the duty of an officer when a man is wounded, to make sure it's not an SIW [Self-Inflicted Wound] as they call it. Some fellas might shoot themselves through the foot to get back to Gladdy or something like that, you see. The odd one, not very many. But it was impossible for me to shoot sideways, so, quite obvious it wasn't! So, they found that my breech in the chamber was absolutely full, and no problem there. And, I was detailed off, these two chaps were detailed to take me to a field nursing station.

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