RANGERS ROADS: October 18th 1918: The Rangers as Liberators.

The 20th Battalion’s success at Iuwy came at a terrible cost, and the Ranger’s rifle companies were at something like 45 men where each normally had 227.  A handful of new volunteers and conscripts trickled in every week as did another handful who returned from hospitals.  But the advance towards and then across Belgium had to continue.

Scouts, runners, and signalers had to be trained up. Newly promoted Lance Sergeants and newly commissioned lieutenants had to learn their new jobs.  All were literally being trained on the march.  For the men who had made it through Amiens, the Scarpe, and cracked the Hindenburg Lines, there was always more to learn.

While the rest of the French countryside was barely damaged, the retreating Germans still blew huge craters in most crossroads and collapsed every bridge as they went.  Progress was slow.  There was one other delay.

Inhabitants of that part of France in 1918 were in a terrible state. Many men had been called up in 1914 in the days before four years of German occupation had begun.  The remaining men between 16 and 60 had been dragged away as slave labourers. The women, the young and the very old remained and Germany – now facing critical food shortages – sparred very little for these occupied communities. Famine was tightening its grip.

When the Rangers marched into Neuville-sur-l’Escault and Douchy, and occupied Auberchicourt, it was to a rapturous welcome from ragged and thin French civilians. They didn’t have much to share except dry sleeping quarters yet their joy and gratitude lifted many a weary heart.

It is one thing to be a victorious soldier – even with another battle in or two in front of you — but it is something else to be a Liberator.