He joined the 75th Battalion of the Canadian
Infantry in WW1 as a Lieutenant and was posted to the Western Front where he
was Mentioned in Despatches and recommended for a Military Cross. He was soon promoted and gained the rank of
Major.
Major James Langstaff was killed in action on 1st
March 1917 during a Canadian attack on the German Lines near Vimy Ridge and was
buried in Villers Station Cemetery, Pas de Calais, France.
From “The Dead” written by James Langstaff shortly before he
was killed:
"These
laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine
of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and
joy, and that unhoped serene
That men
call age; and those who would have been.
Their sons,
they gave, their immortality.
Blow,
bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth.
Holiness,
lacked so long, and Love, and Pain.
Honour has
come back, as a king, to earth.
And paid his
subjects with a royal wage;
And
Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have
come into our heritage."
Shell Dodging, January 1917
"Up in the trenches the men get fairly expert at
detecting the direction of shells and are able to dodge them to some extent.
This is particularly the case with some of the Trench mortar shells,
"rum-jars," as they are called, which not only can be heard coming
but actually be seen in the air. They have a very high trajectory and are a long
time in the air relatively to the distance they have to go. On the other hand,
some other shells are impossible to dodge — "whizz-bangs," for
instance, which have a very low trajectory and at certain ranges out- strip the
sound of the explosion, so that a man struck by one never hears the shell that
hit him. It is a very interesting study, comparing the time which is taken by the
sound of the shell and the shell itself to traverse various ranges. Sound travels
at a constant speed of 1,100 feet per second (whereas a gun starts off with a
certain muzzle velocity) and gradually overtakes the shell and eventually precedes
it if the range is long enough. Thus, at certain short ranges or with very fast
guns the shell beats the sound; at longer ranges the shell passes you at the
same instant that you hear it "whirr"; and at still longer ranges you
hear the shell before it arrives.
It takes one some time to get on to all these phenomena — I
can remember I used often to be puzzled at hearing the sharp bark of our own field
guns apparently from just behind my back, at the very moment the shell was
heard scrunching overhead. The reason was, of course, that I happened to be at just
the exact range where the sound of the shell was overtaking the shell
itself."
WHAT PRAYER MEANT TO HIM
- DECEMBER 25, 1916.
I know that
I have been guided in many things. Other people might refuse to admit that it
was guidance, but I've been there myself, and I've lived through the
experiences myself, and I'm sure. Also, since getting over here, I really
believe that I have been conscious of guidance and support and wisdom in
difficult places. In the raid we pulled off at Ypres, for example, I'm positive
that I had special guidance. Our party was to go over at midnight, but the
scout officer, who had been out for two hours trying to locate the hole our
guns had blown in the German wire, had not returned and nobody knew just where
the gap was. Our artillery barrage was beginning and the zero hour arrived and
still the scout had not returned. I had to make a decision one way or the other
and I ordered the party out to take a chance on locating the gap. It looked
like a rash order, but it turned out all right for the party had gone only a
few yards when they came across the scout officer returning with the
information! This may not sound very convincing, but I'm sure of it, and about other things that have happened.
February 13,
1917.
Anyhow
everything is all for the best, and I'm trying to make the most of the time
over here and I hope that I am learning from these experiences, and picking up
from day to day more patience and tact and judgment and firmness and knowledge
of human nature and power to
handle men, that will perhaps be useful to me in the future and make this not
waste time.
*February
27, 1917. I believe more and more in prayer and I'm sure that I've got strength
and wisdom through it for tasks over here. (* Taken
from his last letter).
THE ANSWER.
Written by
Major J. M. LangstafT during the early months of his enlistment:
I.
The tyrant
lord has drawn his sword,
And has flung
the scabbard away.
He has said
the word that loosed his horde
To ravage,
destroy, and slay.
"Then
where are those who will dare oppose
The blast of
my fury's flame?"
But a salty
breeze swept across the seas.
And back the
clear answer came:
"We
have heard the boast of your mighty host,
And slaves
will we ne'er become,
Let our
deeds declare what bur hearts will dare.
We come! We
come! We come!"
II.
The Mother
of Men has called for them,
The nations
she reared long ago;
"In
Freedom's name I make my claim,
By the
tokens that freemen know.
Let the
world behold, as in ages old.
That my
strength can never decay.
In a cause
that's right, wall ye rise and fight?
Give me
answer: yea or nay!"
"We
have heard your call, mother of all.
From the
shores of your island home.
Let him die
in thrall who denies that call
We come! We
come! We come!"
III.
The lion's
young, they forth have sprung
At the sound
of the lion's roar.
To defend
the lair they once did share
By the
far-flung ocean's shore.
With eye
aflame and ruffled mane.
They greet
the approaching fray.
Let the foe
beware who roused that lair,
For list to
the lion's bay.
*'We have
heard on the air the bugle's blare
And the roll
of the muttering drum;
To the
surging beat of ten thousand feet.
We come! We
come! We come!"
A SONNET ON WAR Written by Major J. M. Langstaff for the
Regimental Paper shortly before his death.
I never
thought that strange romantic war
Would shape
my life and plan my destiny;
Though in my
childhood's dreams I've seen his car
And grisly
steeds flash grimly thwart the sky.
Yet now
behold a vaster, mightier strife
Than echoed
on the plains of sounding Troy,
Defeats and
triumphs, death, wounds, laughter, life.
All mingled
in a strange complex alloy.
I view the
panorama in a trance
Of awe, yet
coloured with a secret joy.
For I have
breathed in epic and romance.
Have lived
the dreams that thrilled me as a boy.
How sound
the ancient saying is, forsooth!
How weak is
Fancy's gloss of Fact's stern truth!
—J. M. L.
More of his poems here: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Canadian_poems_of_the_great_war.djvu/102
and the full text of a special memorial to James is
available as a download here https://archive.org/stream/majorjmlangstaff00languoft/majorjmlangstaff00languoft_djvu.txt
