He Raises a Company
“‘Captain Percy Guthrie, Seventy-first York Infantry,’ the message which he handed the operator was signed. The first Canadian had volunteered his services to the King.
“Captain Guthrie returned at once to the theater, joined his wife, and witnessed the rest of the performance. The curtain came down, and with his wife, Captain Guthrie again headed to the telegraph-office. This time the operator was not thinking about sleep. He had just received a reply to Captain Guthrie’s telegram and was anxiously awaiting his return. The answer read: ‘Offer accepted. Proceed to recruit volunteers forthwith.’”
Guthrie raised his company and went to the front. He soon rose in rank, and at last was given command of a regiment of Scots.
Guthrie is said to possess almost a boyish exuberance of spirit, but of some things he will not jest. He will not even talk about them. Evidently the horror he has met with at the front has left a permanent impression. The following incident is told by a close friend of the Colonel’s, Charles K. Howard, representative of the Canadian Government Railway:
“On a night in the battle of Festubert the Tenth Canadians went over the trenches. The flares from the machine guns made the line as light as day. A piece of the German trenches was taken. The only injury that the Colonel at this portion of the scrap received were some tears in the legs from barbed wire entanglements, although he lost in three-quarters of an hour two-thirds of his battalion. The piece that was taken must be held until reinforcements came. These were a little slow in arriving. A captain held one end of the line while the Colonel, leading his men down the trenches, with his bombers cleared out another section. The German line began to give slowly. Step by step, they slid back around the traverses toward Givenchy. The Canadians gathered their strength and started to press forward. A brave Westphalian officer tried to hold his men and stem the tide. He stood up to his knees in mud, fighting until his last bomb was gone. The Colonel, at the head of his men, rushed upon the officer, who, weighing perhaps forty pounds less than the Colonel, was not daunted. He grasped the Colonel by both arms, holding him for a moment, and then, with the strength borne of despair, lifted him bodily into the air, holding him rigid so that he could not move.”