January 13, 1940.

Two stories on the same day and subject…

Second Half of Dominion’s First Division of Fighting Men Convoyed by French and British Warships Over Black Atlantic Ocean Arrives in England Without Mishap, in Fine Spirits

Gregory Clark is now in England with the first Canadian division. He crossed in a troopship. The text of his New Year’s broadcast, prepared before he sailed with the second contingent, is on page two.

By Gregory Clark, LONDON

The Canadian first division’s second volley landed unerringly on its target – England. Men you saw in Canada a few days ago are now in historic old barracks where a century’s history has been made.

In gray ocean days they have been transfigured from the Canadians you knew, modest humdrum lads in hasty khaki, into figures of this vast dynamic pattern of Britain. Now your boys march with kings – now your sons march with the Black Prince and Marlborough and Wellington.

They are here, and how the old kind bones of Britain must quiver to feel their young step.

Transfiguration by convoy across the bleak Atlantic is as beautiful a ceremony as most mysteries. You take a man, the grandson or the great-grandson of a pioneer from Britain who went this lonely way to an unknown destiny in a far new land a hundred years ago, and you put him all rollicking with his comrades in a batch aboard a ship.

He and his comrades are still Canadians as realistic as you yourself. Then on a gray noon they feel the ship move. They rush on deck to find themselves only part of a string of ships slowly stumbling out of a strange harbor. On shore thin crowds cheer faintly. On their own deck their own band plays thinly.

It is not much of moment. They do not feel that they are looking their last upon their native land for long, perhaps forever. The gray air is sharp with strangeness and delight. They are moving at snail’s pace into the unknown. They do not sense the mystery.

Men on every ship are cheering as schoolboys cheer on their way to root at a game against a rival school.

Into a kind of stillness they go swiftly. Far more swiftly than they realize the harbor sweeps by and out the string of humble ships plod. Humble ships because outside await the gentry and the nobility of ships – the warships of convoy.

First Taste of War

Low lurching for all their gentility, the sea gray warships lie turrets deep sunk, their sinister turrets seeming to rise out of the sea itself. It is here your boy feels a lump in his throat, swallows it and hears the first far chanting of the mystery, for the gray trim gentry of the sea swing smoothly like trained players of some gigantic game out into the grand arc into which the humble ships shuffle and take their places, like clumsy dancers in an old and stately quadrille.

Just to see those warships, French and British, filled with incomparable power and speed, like javelins around the stodgy passenger liners, gives the first hint of beauty and of pageant.

Out to sea they swing, and oh, the envy of it. Not an eye is for the fading hills of Canada, but only for the leaping ships and the wide, lonely sea. I would not care to say where the moment of transfiguration comes in man, whether it be the first hour or the last hour of the journey of endless marching, wheeling, obliquing, angling as we thrust day and night in our weird convoy dance across the ocean.

Warships “Out There”

It might be at the very start, just out of the joy a horse lover feels at the grace and power of a horse. It might be in ghostly night, when all the ships are black as death, and not a cigarette winks on any deck, nor any tiny ray of light, and the stodgy ships in the middle of the ring see one another like shadowy islands, and half suspected, half seen, the lean low thoroughbreds plunging farther out.

That would be a good moment for transfiguration to come. To me it seemed as if I were on Georgian Bay in late fall and the shadows out yonder were islands passing, but to any young Canadian to stand on the dark deck and feel under him the great lift of the sea and to hear the deep and ancient sound of it and to see, like shadows, strange and ghostly yet dear and companionable, the bodies of other ships. soundlessly marching together in this grave dance of the convoy, must have been a moment of great beauty.

Strange Christmas

And in such moments of beauty all transfiguration comes.

Yet in the ships we played our familiar parts. Christmas came and went. Our ship was a Polish ship and its captain prepared us Christmas trees on all the decks and in the dining saloons.

On our ship Captain Mert Plunkett, warbound in search of a new Dumbells – a quarter of a century younger than his old ones. And he and other war service men made us programs and taught us to harmonize the carols, dividing us into tenors and bass. We gave one another silly gifts and each one sneaked away to some quiet place to re-read letters already worn, or to draw out and hold close snapshots or remembrances less manly.

But somewhere between the new and the old, somewhere on that queerest of all Christmas eves, or the loneliest of Christmas days, though we fell over one another in our ships, the transfiguration came. For the men who looked today upon England were not the boys who left you a few days ago. My authority for saying this is the fact that a man who is married is not the same man he was an instant before. The father of a son is not the same man from the moment he first looks with startled, anguished eyes on his first born. And a man who meets with at deep and moving experience is no longer what he was.

Big Moment in Life

These of the second volley of Canadians to strike England have passed through a deep and profound experience. No mishap marked it. No tragedy of any sort interrupted for one moment the stately quadrille of the ships wheeling and curving their way in a curious shifting form like a country dance across the wide ocean. Nothing odd or shaking touched any single life of us all, yet we are all changed. Because in these days we have in silence, patience, repose and thoughtfulness, realized all at once, in a grip like love at first sight our dedication.

We are for a fact off to war. All ties are cut. All roads home are lost. The one way is straight ahead.

Out of the sea in our plodding, stodgy ships ringed by war horses of ships, we came to a place in the sea where misty shapes rose dimly to meet us.

At incredible speed they streaked toward us, destroyers to fanfare us in.

Warplanes Salute

Out of the sky warplanes came flying to rock their wings in salute to us. And so with companions on the sea and in the sky we came with ever increasing numbers to a country of mist. And on one of our ships the pipers from Toronto played their regimental airs and all the ships cheered us and the destroyers who had brought us safe home raced past us to swing and stand to man ship and cheer us. And on the shores people heard the pipes and saw the wheeling destroyers and knew it was us. And they thronged out and cheered us too.

Our arrival was on a morning so bright and free for this land that it was a miracle and a portent. Then tenders to shore and trains and a fast race in the little rocketing coaches, and now as the Duke of Wellington said to Sam Small, “Let the battle commence.”

Star Weekly Writer To Chronicle Exploits Of Canada’s Soldiers

Gregory Clark Goes Overseas With Contingent and is Now in Motherland – Describes Scenes of Embarkation in Coast-to-Coast Broadcast

Gregory Clark, staff feature writer for The Star Weekly, has gone overseas with troops of the Canadian Active Service Force to chronicle the exploits of the men of the Maple Leaf on the battle front of Europe in articles which will appear in these columns and in The Daily Star. Through the medium of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Mr. Clark’s annual New Year’s talk was heard on a coast-to-coast network of forty stations. He dealt chiefly with incidents connected with the embarkation at a Canadian port of the contingent he accompanied in a transport, and his remarks were of compelling interest to the families and friends of Canada’s fighting men and to the general public. Following is the full text of Mr. Clark’s address:

“I am speaking to you from the Land of Somewhere into which lately some tens of thousands of Canadians have vanished. A few years ago there was a popular song about the ‘Beautiful Land of Somewhere’ – but this somewhere is not exactly beautiful. It is fascinating, it is filled with meaning and power, and to men that is more than beauty.

“Already in our country tens of thousands of families are concerned about those of us who have vanished, and I think a pleasant New Year’s message would be to tell you some of the characteristics and incidents of this curious Land of Somewhere insofar as I have seen it. I might say at the start that all’s well. In all the thousands upon thousands of faces I have seen. I have marked no unhappy face. No face of a young man that yearns for the wide bed you gave him in place of the narrow bed of duty he now lies in.

Contrast Beyond Belief

“Men love duty. The natural man loves to be part of an enterprise, with good men on his right and his left. May I say that of all the thousands I have seen in camps, on trains and in ships, your sons have good men on their right and on their left.

“I am an old soldier myself – a little too gone in the legs to be of use in this war, unless as a camp follower and teller of tales, but to me the contrast between this Canadian expedition and the old one is beyond belief. Where we went with banners and bands, these boys go like foxes in the night. I sometimes wonder if, in the old war, a lot of us were not borne upon a great wave of sound and bunting to the very edge of battle, and many of us not a little dismayed by the chilly silence of No Man’s Land.

Straight Aboard Ship

“In this war no artificial stimulus has been used. These magnificent young Canadians have not been drummed into war, no bugles have sirened them, no vaunting flags have dazzled them. They are here in the Land of Somewhere for reasons that would have been unbelievable to our leaders only 20 years ago. They are here by their will, and I do not believe I have ever seen a more inspiring gathering of men.

“Like foxes in the night… let me describe an embarkation. It is at one of the nameless ports where Canadians embark across the Atlantic. At 7 a.m., a train from somewhere in the wide Dominion comes 100 or 3,000 miles, backs silently into the dockyard. The people of the port are trained to take no part in the business. Not one woman, one child, awaits on the platform. No welcoming band is there – just three small officers and a dozen soldiers with white armbands, the guides.

“The train slows at the pierside. It is packed with men. They have travelled from prairie and forest, from city and town and farm, hundreds, thousands of miles. Now they smell the sea. Great ships loom beside them. In the offing wait the mighty battle wagons of Britain’s sea. Yet in silence the train slides to a halt.

“A voice in a loudspeaker calls. “Detrain all troops!” Out of the coaches the soldiers spill and form in their platoons on the guides who act as markers. The rolls are called by the sergeants. In their battle rompers, their packs and haversacks neat and new, the lines respond in the darkness of morning. A command rings. The regiments turn in file and with a sharp beat of feet march straight aboard ship. Before the sun rises they are aboard and away.

The Battle Rompers

“How different from the old wars, where a man had to take a hundred farewells and stifle his tears, if any, in songs and cheers and the waving and the bands and the old pomp. This war is not emotional. It is cold, cold as the heart of a man – or a million men – with a deadly purpose.

“As plain as their purpose, as plain as their leave taking, is this curious uniform, the battle rompers, the teddy bear suits, as they call them. It is a little hard for an old soldier to get used to the sight of these ski suits the boys wear, but the old soldiers who wear them, and there are plenty, say there is nothing like them for comfort and freedom.

“I have one comic story about a captain on the embarkation staff. He of course still wore the old war cap, the old war greatcoat with its flowing skirt, the breeches and the field boots. Maybe he even had spurs on at a dock. At any rate he was the standard captain, fraught with an important office. His eyes glued to his manifest, he was striding along the pier jammed with the serried ranks of Canadian regiments newly arrived, when he sensed a figure beside him requesting his attention. Out of the corner of his eye the captain saw battle rompers.

Figure Persistent

“‘Not now. Not now,’ said the captain. ‘I’m busy.’ But the figure stayed beside him and repeated his address. ‘Please go ‘way,’ said the captain sharply. ‘I’m busy. Can’t you see?’

“The man beside him in the homespun rompers took two lithe strides and placed himself in the path of the engrossed captain. The captain looked up fair in the face of one of Canada’s greatest heroes, a V.C., a man on whose new battle romper sleeve already gleam six gold bars for wounds and on the homely shoulders of whose blouse appeared the rank badges of a brigadier-general… and on whose face, I may say, for the captain himself told me, appeared a whimsical smile.

“The most enthralling of all the things I have been privileged to see in this Land of Somewhere was a captains’ meeting. We have heard all our lives of the sea might of Britain, but until I sat in at this captains’ meeting of the masters of merchant ships about to depart in convoy I did not understand what exactly is meant by that well known phrase.

“It was in an old room of an old building, the walls decorated with steel engravings of Nelson, and of ships aslant in battle or in breeze. At a long walnut table sat a number of middle-aged men in civilian clothes. They were curiously alike – alike in middle age, alike in all having faces and hands dark-tanned with wind and salt, alike in being heavy built, solid, with short stubby noses on which their spectacles sat half way down. There was not a lean man among them.

Aristocratic, Keen

“Scattered amidst them down the great shining table were officers of the British navy. These were lean men, younger by 10 years or more than the merchant captains. In their navy blue, close fitting uniforms, their smooth brushed black hair, their faces mostly dark and aquiline, their manners aristocratic and keen, they made an extraordinary contrast to these quiet, heavy-set grizzled men in gray and brown and black, with pipes in their teeth and spectacles out on their stubby noses.

“Then the meeting began. The chairman, a naval officer, rose and started to read the agenda. It was a typewritten sheet containing the orders for the convoy that would leave in a few hours. It detailed the position of every one of the merchant vessels, tankers, freighters composing the convoy. All the spectacled masters followed him on their typewritten copies. It detailed the signals, the rules

Air of Deference

“And suddenly the realization dawned upon those of us not of this meeting but only in it that there was an extraordinary air of deference in the manner of the naval officer reciting the items on the agenda. I thought of soldiers instructing civilians, but how different was this. With the most respectful air, this slim, trim naval officer of high rank deferred to every interruption from the company of masters -interruptions in speech of the Clyde and Tyne and the South Country and many a foreign accent – and then, as the meeting progressed and the spectacles went farther out on the stubby noses and the pipes blew smoke and the questions multiplied, we began to get a faint far sense of what the sea might of Britain is.

“At last up stands the commander of the fighting escort that is to cut figures round about the merchant convoy, and in the same, trim, polished naval manner he explains what he will do in the two or three eventualities, and in the respectful, level gaze over the tops of the spectacles this time from all the merchant captains, and in the deeply respectful air and tone the naval officer used to them, we see the story whole.

“‘Why,’ said one of the navy officers after the meeting, when we all adjourned to stand about another large room of the old house and meet and chat, ‘they are the sea might of Britain. All we do is guarantee the freedom of the sea to them.

“And he meant it. From his deep blue heart he meant it. And those, ladies and gentlemen, those middle-aged, ruggedly built, grizzled, tanned and bespectacled men in plain business suits, familiar with every sea and every channel and bight and bay of this old round earth, are the men to whom we Canadians are so deeply indebted this day. They make possible our brotherhood in the great empire. They are among the more honored in this fascinating Land of Somewhere.

“Land of Somewhere”

“One so splendid thing about this Land of Somewhere is – a man is never alone. In platoons, in battalions, in trainloads, shiploads, in camps, they are men in company.

“Already their brotherhood is sealed by the seals of contact and friendship around fires, around tables. Soon their brotherhood will submit to the greater seal. Think of them in these companies, these throngs. Think of them as having found, for their right hand and their left, a friend.

“So good-by, and instead of a happy New Year, may we wish one another today a happy new world.”

The broadcast was arranged by the talks department of the CBC’s national program office, the address being recorded just before Mr. Clark sailed.


Editor’s Notes: I decided to include these two stories together as they cover the same event, the first being Greg’s article on the first movement of Canadian troops to Britain, and the second being the same but a transcript of a radio address. Greg was restless by the start of the war and was even considering leaving the Star Weekly. It seems to me that him becoming a war correspondent was a sort of compromise. The troops would make it in time to witness the fall of France a few months later, with very few participating in that action. As a result of that disaster, and all of the lost equipment, the Canadians became the only fully armed contingent in Britain.