the following is an article that appeared in the Orillia Times, Thurs. Feb. 20, 1919.
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It was the night before Cambrai, and like many others, Pte. Arthur Herring lay in his dugout and wrote home.
In the dawn of September 30, they stood shivering in the trenches waiting for the barrage to begin. At 5 minutes to 5 a.m. a young lieutenant’s voice rang crisp and clear: “Two minutes to go, boys—over the top and good luck to you.” And they were up and over. Pte. Herring says he knew as he stepped over the parapet that he was going to be struck—knew it as well as the fact that he carried with him 1,000 rounds of ammunition. His was a machine guncorps that had gone over the top with the infantry, and he No. 3 on the gun. No fear of death was in his heart, he just had what his pals called “the hunch’
A shell burst behind him, fragments of shrapnel struck his back, but his equipment saved him. They advanced a mile: then high up in a four-storey building he spied an enemy gun crew. He saw a gunner’s face clearly, aiming at them—then next minute he was down—down on his hands and knees, coughing, groping in the dust—shot through the stomach. He managed to crawl into a shell hole, undid his tunic and found the bullet had emerged through his side. A pal lay groaning in the shell hole with both jaws broken and he managed to bind him up: nearby his chum, Heron, a Toronto boy, lay dead, and he buried him. At nine o’clock he emerged from the shell hole and on his hands and knees crawled across No Man’s Land to a clearing station. Then kindly arms lifted him into a lorry and he knew no more. For five days he lay unconscious, then wakened up in a hospital in Boulogne. From there he was sent to Amherst Park Hospital, London, England. He returned on the ‘Baltic’ and to his sister’s home, 49 Ann St., Toronto. His home is in Sebright. Pte. Herring and others of his corps were recommended for Military Medals. “They forgot to give them to us” he laughed, but Pte. Herring’s bravery will be remembered.
Footnotes: A son of Edward Thomas Herring & Elizabeth Curran of Rama: He served in the Canadian Machine Gun Corps, 3rd. Bn.– Arthur John Herring, married Anne Carmichael of Thorah, in March, of 1919, they relocated to Long Branch (Toronto), where they raised two children. Arthur was a retired employee of Goodyear Tire, when he died in 1970, his wife Anne predeceased him in 1945. His chum, was Pte. William Heron, of Scarborough Junction, and is now buried in the Mill Switch British Cemetery, Nord, France, near Cambrai.
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