February 1917

As you can see I am jumping ahead to February 1916 as this is where Jack's story finally begins. After arriving in England in November 1916, Jack's battalion (180th CEF) was broken up and the men put into the 3rd Reserve Battalion. In February of 1917, Jack was assigned to the 123rd Pioneer Battalion.

The Canadian Expeditionary Force had eight pioneer battalions whose task was to performed construction tasks in the forward area that did not require the special equipment of engineers. This included constructing trenches and dugouts although they occasionally acted in the engineer role on tasks such as the construction of bridges. They had a large proportion of tradesmen and were organized the same as infantry battalions.


Recruitment poster for 5th Pioneers.

The 123rd Pioneer was based out of the Witley Camp in Surrey, England. On February 1st, the battalion was informed that they would be mobilized for France. According to the 123rd Battalion War Diary, it was during this time that they finally received (after many delays) their steal helmets and Lee Enfield rifles.

Jack, along with many of the new men in the battalion, were discovered by the Commanding Officer that they had not received any gas instruction, dental treatments, inoculations or even instruction in field engineering or wiring. This was soon corrected. The whole Battalion spent the next few weeks training heavily in field engineering and in gas attacks. Dummy trenches were constructed in order to train the men in "working parties." Men were vaccinated against typhus and many fell ill because of it. The last week of February was spent fumigated the huts as they had become infested with what the war diary called "vermin."

The men of the 123rd Battalion trained hard for soon they would be in France.