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FIVE The Tappert Skirmish While the battle lines were being drawn in the press and at various meetings by the citizens of Berlin through the end of February and the first days of March, life for the lads of the 118th, who were kicking their heels while waiting for their battalion to be filled, went on its merry way. Training was barely basic, discipline was lax, movies were free, and hospitality generous, and there was always the chance of a decent punch-up on a Saturday night. The city's churches continued to line up to dine (though presumably not wine) the troops, so that at least once a week there was a free meal to be had. The speeches were boring , but the chicken was good, as was the service by the church ladies, who sometimes burst into song when the eating was over. On February 23, for example, St. Peter's Lutheran did the honours, though on this occasion the ladies visited the barracks with copious gifts of cakes, candy, cigarettes, and cigars. On March 2, it was the turn of Zion Evangelical (Breithaupt's church), and the next day St. Paul's Lutheran. It was all good public relations, particularly for the Lutheran churches which, with their large German congregations, many of whose members inevitably had family connections in the fatherland, were suspected of being responsible for much of the resistance to the war effort. Indeed, Rev. Boese of St. Paul's, in his address to the troops, talked at great length about the patriotic integrity of his church and congregation and why they still held some services in German (just for the older folk). The soldiers, of course, had too much integrity to be bought off by sweet talk and free meals. On the night before enjoying the St. Paul's hospitality they marched up King St. West to Carl Schultz's shoe repair shop and captured a large picture of "Kaiser Willie." They then went on into Waterloo, where they broke into Ritzer's tailor 76 The Tappert Skirmish 77 shop and Doersam's bookstore where they stole more German memorabilia. Then it was back to Berlin, waving trophies and singing and shouting. At Gettas and Gettas they stopped for some sustenance, and when one of the other customers objected to their escapade he had a picture of the Kaiser smashed over his head and was chased out into the street. All good, clean fun as far as the Telegraph was concerned. The next night, George Ahrens found a soldier lying drunk in the gutter at the corner of King and Queen. He tried to help him but was set upon by other soldiers and ended up in hospital. It should be noted here that it cannot have been the entire contingent of recruits, of whom there were by now about 400, that sparked these outrages. One particularly prominent group was the Machine Gun Section. They considered themselves a sort of elite corps of the 118th, but maybe they had already heard the grim statistic that the average life of a machine gunner in the trenches was about 22 minutes and were keen to do as much living as possible while there was still time. Then there were the likes of Sergeant Major Blood, who had figured out that their officers were a feeble lot, and that they could therefore be as lawless as they liked under the guise of patriotism . Of course other towns in Canada had their military riots, but in none were they as numerous or as ugly as they were in Berlin, whose unique history and ethnic composition were at the root of the conscription crisis. Here, in 1916, the image of the outlaw gang terrorizing the streets of a Wild West town while the sherrif cowers in his office was not so very far from the truth. It was on Saturday night, March 4, that this group of military cowboys staged their most notorious escapade. At about 10 o'clock they were lounging about as usual outside Gettas and Gettas. It had been a slow evening. They'd had a few beers and tried some desultory recruiting, but there weren't enough "Yellowbacks " around for a good fight. What to do before drifting back to the barracks? Inevitably the name of Rev. C.R. Tappert came up. There had been talk of "having a word with him" on the night of the Concordia incident, but the idea had evaporated in...

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