Perhaps one shell, or it may have been three, would have been the ammunition ration of our particular front for the day.

It was nobody's fault at the moment of fighting. It lay perhaps between those who had anticipated and prepared for war for forty years and those who had neglected to foresee the possibility of such an enterprise. The fact remained, we had no shells.

Every day our defenses were leveled. Every night we would crawl out, after long hours spent flat on our stomachs, covered to the neck in mud and blood, and endeavor to repair the damage. Every night we lost a few men; every day we lost a few men, and still we held our ground.

The day casualties were the worst. The wounded men had to lie in the damp and dirt until night came to shelter them; then some one would help, or if that were not possible, the wounded would have to make his own pain-strewn way back to a dressing station. During the day some one might discover that he had developed a frozen toe. He could get no relief; he dare not attempt to leave his partial shelter. The slightest movement, and the enemy would have closed his career. By night his foot would be a fiery torture, and by the time a doctor was near enough to help it would be a rotting mass of gangrene, and one man more would be added to the list of permanent cripples.

I am asked, "How did you live? How did you 'carry on'?"

Many a time I have said to myself in thinking of the enemy: "Why don't they come on—why don't the fools strike now? There's no earthly reason why they should not defeat us, and roll on triumphantly to Paris, to Calais, to London, to New York, and so realize their original intention." There was no earthly reason. No.

The Kaiser had talked in lordly voice of "ME and God." The Kaiser has manufactured a God of his own fancy, a God of blood and iron. There is no such God for us. For us, there was always that Unseen Hand which held back the enemy in his might. The All Highest who is not on the side of blood and murder and pillage and outrage and violation; the Almighty, who, crudely though I may express it, is with those who fight for the Right and on the square.

And that is why we were not driven back to the sea. That is why we stood the test. That is why we, the Allied Nations, shall win.

Again, if the German hordes, with their iron power behind them, had had five per cent. of the Anglo-Saxon sporting blood in their veins, they could have licked us long ago. They did not. They have not. They are poor sports. They have eliminated the individuality of "sport" for the efficiency of machinery, and they can not lick us.

Who started the war? The War Machine that had the preparation of half a century, or the peace-loving peoples who, at a day's notice, took their stand for humanity?

Who started the war? There is no room for argument. The Germans started the war.

Who will finish the war? There is no room or argument. We will finish the war.



CHAPTER VIII

"AND OUT OF EVIL THERE SHALL COME THAT WHICH IS GOOD"

The worst days of this war are over. The worst days were those through which we came in the winter of 1914-15. The war may last ten years; the war may be over inside of a few months. Neither contingency would surprise me. We might lose twice as many in killed and wounded as we did through that winter; every white man, British, French, American, of military age, might pay the supreme price, and yet the worst days are gone by.

The worst days of the war passed when the chance of the Hun defeating us was lost. Though all the flower of our manhood were crippled or dead, though our old men and our boys were called to the field, though women had to gird on sword and buckler, none of these things could be worse than to be licked—licked is the word—by a dastardly and cowardly foe.

And if the German Army at the zenith of its strength could not lick one thin line of English, of French and Canadians, how can they lick us when we have Uncle Sam in the balance?

A question to daunt even the scientific brain of a Kaiser, of a Hindenburg, of a Von Bernstorff.

The folks back home are always wondering and inquiring how it is possible to feed the troops under such terrible and awful conditions. The folks back home are the only ones who worry. We do not. Tommy Atkins is much more sure of getting his rations to-morrow than he is of living until to-morrow to eat them.

Right here I would pay a sincere tribute to two departments of our British Army. The Commissary Department which supplies every want of the soldier, from a high explosive shell to a button. It is as near to the one hundred per cent. mark of efficiency as it is possible for a human organization to become. It is not too much to say that it is perfect.

The other department is that of the Medical Corps, the R.A.M.C., or the Red Cross. It is all the same. It is all run with the precision of clockwork. Its whole aim for the comfort and succor of Tommy. Of this department I speak in a later chapter.

The food for the millions of men in France is concentrated at what we may call the Great Base, and from there it is distributed to the different army corps. In each army corps there are two or more divisions. In a division there are three infantry and three artillery brigades, three field companies of engineers, three field ambulances and details. In each infantry brigade are four battalions and in each artillery four batteries. To one company are four platoons, and about seventy men to a platoon.

Each body of men as I have named them is really a separate and distinct unit in itself, but cooperating with all others. The food from the base is brought to the army corps by rail, and is distributed to the divisional headquarters by divisional transports which are operated by the Army Service Corps or the Mechanical Transport. From the divisional headquarters the next step is to the brigades, and brigade transports collect the food and take it another few miles nearer to the boys.

Battalion transport wagons then bring the food and other supplies down to battalion headquarters. At these headquarters are the quartermaster sergeants of each company, and they, with their staff, during the daytime pack up and get ready for distribution supplies for each separate platoon. At night the company wagons, already packed, are drawn up as close to the trenches as conditions will permit. If the country is too torn with shells to permit the use of horses, men will drag them.

I have seen these wagons sometimes within five hundred yards of the front line trenches, and again ration parties may have to crawl back a mile before meeting them. It all depends on a number of circumstances. On a moonlight night it is not possible to come so close as on a dark night. In rain the wagons may sink into mud-holes, or in badly shelled areas there is danger of their turning over into a hole. Everything depends on conditions and the good judgment of the man in charge.



Each evening from each section, and there are four sections to a platoon, the corporal or sergeant in command will detail a couple of men for ration party. Ration party is no pleasant job; as Tommy terms it, it is "one of the rottenest ever."



The two unhappy boys will crawl out as soon as it is dark. They reach the supply wagon, or it may be only a dump of goods. There they will find the quartermaster in charge, in all likelihood. To him they tell their platoon number—Number Sixteen Platoon, Section Four, perhaps—and the quartermaster will hand them the rations. One man will get half a dozen parcels, maybe more. His comrade never offers to relieve him of any—to the comrade there is designated a higher duty. The quartermaster takes up with care and hands with tenderness to the second man a jar, or possibly a jug.

On going back to the trenches a thoughtless sentry may halt the ration party. I have seen it done. I have heard the conversation. I dare not write it. There goes one of the boys, both arms hugging a miscellaneous assortment of packages. He slips and struggles and swears and falls, then picks himself up and gathers together the scattered bundles. But what of the other? A jug held tightly in both hands, he chooses his steps as would a dainty Coryphee. He dare not trip. He dare not fall. He MUST not spill one drop. Jugs are hard to replace in France; in fact, it is much easier to get a jug in Nebraska than in France.

The boys finally reach the trench in safety, and next morning the rations are issued at "stand-to." "Stand-to" is the name given to the sunrise hour, and again that hour at night when every man stands to the parapet in full equipment and with fixed bayonet. After morning stand-to bayonets are unfixed, for if the sunlight should glint upon the polished steel our position might be disclosed to some sniper.

To my mind stand-to is more or less a relic of the early days of the war, when these two hours were those most favored by the Germans for attack, and so it has become a custom to be in readiness.

A day's rations in the trenches consists of quite a variety of commodities. First thing in the winter morning we have that controversial blind, rum. We get a "tot" which is about equal to a tablespoonful. It is not compulsory, and no man need take it unless he wishes. This is not the time or place to discuss the temperance question, but our commanders and the army surgeons believe that rum as a medicine, as a stimulant, is necessary to the health of the soldier, therefore the rum is issued.

We take this ration as a prescription. We gulp it down when half frozen, and nearly paralyzed after standing a night in mud and blood and ice, often to the waistline, rarely below the ankle, and it revives us as tea, cocoa or coffee could never do. We are not made drunkards by our rum ration. The great majority of us have never tasted medicinal rum before reaching the trenches; there is a rare chance that any of us will ever taste it, or want to taste it, again after leaving the trenches.

The arguments against rum make Mr. Tommy Atkins tired, and I may say in passing that I have never yet seen a chaplain refuse his ration. And of the salt of the good God's earth are the chaplains. There was Major the Reverend John Pringle, of Yukon fame, whose only son Jack was killed in action after he had walked two hundred miles to enlist. No cant, no smug psalm-singing, mourners'-bench stuff for him. He believed in his Christianity like a man; he was ready to fight for his belief like a man; he cared for us like a father, and stood beside us in the mornings as we drank our stimulant. Again, I repeat if a man is found drunk while on active service, he is liable to court martial and death. A few years' training of this kind will make the biggest pre-war drunkard come back home a sober man.

Each soldier carries into the trenches with him sufficient coke and wood to last for his four days in. Upon the brazier he cooks his own meals. For the first few months we were unable to place our braziers on the ground; they would have sunk into the mud. If we attempted to cook anything we would stick a bayonet into a sandbag and hang the brazier on it, then cook in our mess tins over that.

To-day there are dugouts, trench platforms and other conveniences which simplify the domestic arrangements of the trenches to a marvelous degree.

A soldier is at liberty to cook his own rations by himself, but as a rule we all chum in together. We may all take a hand in the cooking, or we may appoint a section cook for a day or for a week, according to his especial facility.

After the rum ration we receive some tea and sugar, lots of bully beef and biscuits. The bully beef is corned beef and has its origin, mysterious to us, in Chicago, Illinois, or so we believe. It is quite good. But you can get too much of a good thing once too often. So sometimes we eat it, and sometimes we use the unopened tins as bricks and line the trenches with them. Good solid bricks, too! We get soup powders and yet more soup powders. We get cheese that is not cream cheese, and we get a slice of raw bacon. Often we eat the bacon at once, sometimes we save it up to have a "good feed" at one time. One can plan one's own menu just as fancy dictates.

Then we get jam. The inevitable, haunting, horrific "plum and apple." This is made by Ticklers', Limited, of London, England, and after the tins are empty we use them to manufacture hand grenades. In those days our supply of hand bombs was like our supply of shells, problematic to say the least. After a time, back of the line, instruction schools were opened in bomb making and bomb throwing. One or two out of a platoon would go back and learn "how," and then instruct the rest of us to fill the tins with spent pieces of shrapnel, old scraps of iron, anything which came handy, insert the fuse, cotton and so forth, and thus form an effective weapon for close fighting.

We called those bombers "Ticklers' Artillery Brigade," and they tickled many a German with Ticklers' empty jam tins.

A stock of weak tea, some sugar, salt, some bully beef, biscuits crumbled down, the whole well stirred and brought to a boil, then thickened by several soup powders, is a recipe for a stew which, as the Irishman said, is "filling and feeding." Of its appearance I say nothing.

Regardless of any, we are the best fed troops in the field. While in the trenches the food may be rough and monotonous, but there is plenty of it, and it is of the best quality of its kind. No man need ever be hungry in the trenches. It is his own fault if he is.

We grouse at our rations, of course, and make jokes and laugh, but we never run short of supplies.

Behind the lines, when we go back for a rest and are in billets, we are supplied with well-cooked and comfortable meals. Three good squares a day. We have here our field kitchens and our regular cooks, and Mulligan (stew) is not the daily portion, but variations of roast beef, mutton and so forth.

It is good food, and I have heard men exclaim that it was better than anything they had had at home. After investigation I usually found that the men who dilated thus on the gastronomic delights of billets were married men!

The authorities are just as careful about sending up a soldier's letters, his parcels and small gifts from home, as they are about the food and clothing supplies. They recognize that Tommy Atkins naturally and rightly wants to keep in touch with the home folks, and every effort is made to get communications up on time. But war is war, and there are days and even weeks when no letters reach the front line. Those are the days that try the mettle of the men. We do not tell our thoughts to one another. The soldier of to-day is rough of exterior, rough of speech and rough of bearing, but underneath he has a heart of gold and a spirit of untold gentleness.

We play poker, and we play with the sky the limit. Why not? Active service allowance is thirty francs a month—five dollars. Why put on any limit? You may owe a man a hundred, or even two hundred dollars, but what's the difference?—a shell may put an end to you, him and the poker board any old minute. There is no knowing.

Weeks pass and no letters. We play more wildly, squatting down in the mud with the board before us. I have sometimes seen a full house, a straight, three of a kind, or probably four big ones. "I raise you five," says Bill. Bang!—a whiz bang explodes twenty yards away. "I raise you ten." Bang!—a wee willie takes the top off the parapet. "There's your ten, and ten better." Crash!—and several bits of shrapnel probably go through the board. "You're called. Gee, but that was a close one! Deal 'em out, Peat."

Suddenly down the trench will pass the word that the officer and sergeant are coming with letters and parcels. We kick the poker board high above the trench, cards and chips flying in all directions. No one cares, even though he's had a hand full of aces. The letters are in, and every man is dead sure there will be one for him.

We crowd around the officer with shining eyes like so many schoolboys. Parcels are handed out first, but we throw these aside to be opened later, and snatch for the letters. But luck is not always good to all of us, and possibly it will be old Bill who has to turn away empty-handed and alone. No letter. Are they all well, or—no letter.

But Bill is not left alone very long. A pal will notice him, notice him before he himself has had more than a glimpse of the heading of his own precious letter, and going over to Bill, will slap him a hearty blow on the shoulder and say: "Say, Bill, old boy, I've got a letter. Listen to this—" And then, no matter how sacred the letter may be, he will read it aloud before he has a chance to glance at it himself. If it is from the girl, old Bill will be laughing before it is finished—girls write such amusing stuff; but, no matter whom it is from, it is all the same. It is a pleasure shared, and Bill forgets his trouble in the happiness of another.

Kindness, unselfishness and sympathy are all engendered by trench life. There is no school on earth to equal the school of generous thoughtfulness which is found on the battle-fields of Europe to-day. There we men are finding ourselves in that we are finding true sympathy with our brother man. We have everything in common. We have the hardship of the trench, and the nearness of death. The man of title, the Bachelor of Arts, the bootblack, the lumberjack and the millionaire's son meet on common ground. We wear the same uniform, we think the same thoughts, we do not remember what we were, we only know what we are—soldiers fighting in the same great cause.



CHAPTER IX

ALL FUSSED UP AND NO PLACE TO GO

Some days in the trenches are dreariness itself. Sometimes we get discouraged to the point of exhaustion, but these days are rare and when they do occur there is always an alleviation. In every trench, in every section, there is some one who is a joker; who is a true humorist, and who can carry the spirits of the troops with him to the place where grim reality vanishes and troubles are forgotten.

The nights pass quickly enough because at night we have plenty to do. But even while carrying out duties at night many humorous things happen. Take, for instance, the passing of messages up and down the line.

To the civilian message-sending might appear much the same day or night, but not so. In the day we can speak without fear of being overheard, but at night no one knows but that Hans or Fritz may be a few feet on the other side of the parapet with ears cocked for all sounds. So communications have to be made with care. Sometimes the change of a syllable might alter the meaning of a sentence and cause disaster.

A message at night is whispered in lowest tones from man to man. This is a branch of the service for the young recruit to practise. It means much, and a thoughtless error is unpardonable. The first man receives the communication from the officer. Through the silence will come a soft "Hs-s-s." The next in line will creep up and get the words. He in turn calls to the next man and whispers on the order.

It was one night early in the fighting that Major Kirkpatrick sent the message down the line four hundred yards along: "Major Kirkpatrick says to tell Captain Parkes to send up reinforcements to the right in a hurry." That was the message as I got it. That was the message as I transmitted it to the next man. To Captain Parkes the message ran in a hurried whisper: "Major Kirkpatrick says to tell Captain Parkes to send up 'three and fourpence' to the right in a hurry."

When Major Kirkpatrick received three shillings and fourpence he was almost in a state of collapse. Luckily, the situation was not serious, or possibly we might have lost heavily. This shows how imperative it is to have absolute accuracy.

Again, at nights there are different kinds of raids to be carried out. Probably a raid by wire cutters, or possibly an actual trench raid. Nights in France are not meant for sleep. There is usually one hour on duty and two hours off, and something doing all the while.

But the days frequently grow long and tiresome. We sleep, we tell stories, we read when there is anything to read, and we write letters if we have the materials. Or, above all, we work out some new device to spring upon the Boche.

In the early days of the war we knew nothing about hand grenades. The Germans started to use them on us, but it was not a great while before we fell into line and produced bombs to match theirs. At first we had the Tickler variety as previously described; since then we have used the "hair-brush" and others, but to-day we are using the standardized Mill hand grenade.

I can never forget the first bomb that was thrown from our trench. Volunteers were asked for this new and risky job. I will not mention the name of the boy who volunteered in our section, but he was a big, hefty, red-haired chap. He has since been killed. It is noticeable that red-haired fellows are impetuous and frequently ahead of others in bravery, for a moment or two, anyway.

That day there was an additional supply of mud and water in our trench. We were dragging around in it until the bombing commenced, then we crowded like boys round the big fellow, who was close to the parapet, his chest stuck out, his voice vibrant with pride as he said, "Just you wait and see me blow those fellows to smithereens—just you wait and see!"

In those days of makeshift bombs there was a nine-second fuse in each. We were about thirty yards from the Germans' trench. Of course it would not take nine seconds for the bomb to travel thirty yards; rather would it arrive in three seconds, and give Hans and Fritz opportunity to pick it up comfortably and return it in time for its explosion to kill us and not them. Thus the order was to count at least five—one, two, three, four, five—slowly and carefully, after the fuse was lighted and before the bomb left the hand.

Every one had his eyes glued to the periscope, except myself. I watched the fuse in the hand of that red-haired guy. He started to count—one, two, and his hand began to shake; at three his hand was moving about violently; at four the bomb fell. I wonder if there is any one in the world who thinks that we stopped there to see that bomb explode. No, we didn't.

There was a chance right there for the quick thinker, for the man of extraordinary initiative, to win the V.C. Somehow our initiative took us in the other direction. It is really wonderful how fast the average man can beat it when he knows there is certain death should he linger in one spot very long. The way we traveled round the traverse and up the trenches was not slow.

Usually there is something going on, but there are days when a man would not think there was a war at all. It is not every day at the front that both sides are shelling and strafing. We once faced a certain Saxon regiment and for nearly two weeks neither side fired a bullet. This particular Saxon regiment said to us: "We are Saxons, you are Anglo-Saxons, we are not a bit fussy about shooting as long as you won't." So, as our turns came periodically, we faced them and did not shoot.

Actually we sent out working parties in the daytime, both Saxon and British, but such things do not happen any more. And such a situation never yet happened with a Prussian or Bavarian regiment. Those devils like to shoot for the sake of hearing their rifles go off.

There are days, when fighting at close quarters, that both sides feel pretty good. The morning will be bright, and we may open the proceedings by trying to sing German songs, and they will join in by singing British airs, but always in a sarcastic manner, after putting words to them that I dare not write.

On the first day of July, which is Dominion or Confederation Day, the Germans began by singing to a certain Eastern Canadian regiment the first verse of our national anthem, O! Canada. When they got through, they politely asked the young braves of this regiment to sing the second verse. The Canadian boys sent over a few bombs instead, for they did not know the words of the second verse! Not to know the second verse seems to be one of the idiosyncrasies of the peoples of all nations, bar the German!

Should we get tired of singing, we would shout across to the enemy trenches. We would ask pertinent questions about their commanders and impertinent ones about the affairs of their nation. One thing I can say for Hans—he is never slow in answering. His repartee may be clumsy, but it is prompt and usually effective.

We would inquire after the health of old "Von Woodenburg," old "One O'clock," the "Clown Prince," or "One Bumstuff." Hans would take this in a jocular way, slamming back something about Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Lloyd George, or Sir Sham Shoes, but when we really wanted to get Fritz's goat we would tease him about the Kaiser.

We would shout "Gott strafe der Kaiser!" That would put them up in the air higher than a balloon. We would feel like getting out and hitting one another, but we dare not even raise a finger because a sniper would take it off. But after a lull there is always a storm, so before many minutes a bullet would go "crack," which would be the signal for thousands of rifles on both sides to commence an incessant firing. All this over nothing, and nobody getting hurt.

It put me in mind of a couple of old women scrapping over a back-yard fence, and as we say back home, "all fussed up and no place to go."



CHAPTER X

HELLO! SKY-PILOT!

At the outset of the war there was much speculation as to the response the Lion's cubs would make to the call for help. Britain, herself, never doubted that her children, now fully grown and very strong, would rally to the old flag as in the earlier days of their greater dependency. But Britain, England, is of the Brer Rabbit type—she sits still and says nuffin'.

The neutrals speculated on the attitude of Canada. German propaganda had been busy, and certain sections of the Canadian public had been heard to say that they had no part with England—but that was before the war. The speculative neutral had a shock and a disappointment. Not a Canadian, man or woman, but remembered that England was "home," and home was threatened. As one man they answered the short sharp cry.

Australia, New Zealand and South Africa provided food for conversation among the nations then not engaged in the fight. South Africa had a rising, fostered by German money and German lies, but it fizzled out before the determined attitude, not of England, but of the men who counted in South Africa itself. All of these countries, which used to be colonies, came without question when the need arose. They may have had minor disagreements with the Old Country, they may have resented the last lingering parental attitude of the Motherland, but let any one touch as an enemy that Motherland and that enemy had well have cried, "Peccavi!" on the moment.

Above all, the neutrals wondered about India. That vast Far Eastern Empire with her millions of men—what would India do?

What did India do? The maharajahs threw into the coffers of the homeland millions of money, they threw in jewels in quantity to be judged by weight of hundreds, in value to be judged in millions of pounds. They offered their men and their lahks of rupees without reservation. The regular troops of the Eastern Empire, the Ghurkas, the Pathans, the Sikhs, a half dozen others, clamored to be taken over to Europe to fight at the front for the great White Chief.

The Indian troops came to Europe, landed in France, and took up their stand on the western front. To them I must make special reference. Some idea may be abroad that because the Hindu troops are not still in France that they proved poor fighters. This is very far from the truth. The Indian regiments were among our best, but they could not stand the rigors of the European climate. They had been used to the warmth and brightness and dryness of their homeland; they came to cold and rain and mud and unknown discomforts. It was too much. Again, the Indian is made for open, hand-to-hand warfare. Give him a hill to climb and hold, give him a forest to crawl through and gain his point, give him open land to pass over without being seen, he can not be beaten. But the strain, mental and physical, of trench life was too much.

To the Indian, war is a religion. One day I went down the line to where a body of Ghurkas were lying to our left. I walked along about a mile through the muddy ditches and at last came up with one of the men. I stopped and spoke, then offered him a fag. After this interchange of courtesies we fell into conversation. He did not know very much English, and I no Hindustani at all, but in a short time one of the Ghurka officers approached. The officers and men of these regiments are very friendly, more chummy almost than are our officers to our men. This officer acted as an interpreter, and together they told me much that I was anxious to know.

After a little I asked the Ghurka to show me his knife, but he would not. The Ghurka knife is a weapon of wonderful grace. It is short and sharpened on both edges, while it is broad and curved almost to the angle of a sickle. It is used in a flat sweeping movement, which, when wielded by an expert, severs a limb or a head at one blow. I was told that at twenty yards, when they throw it, they never miss.

At last, through the agency of the officer, I found that it is against all the laws of battle for a soldier of this clan to remove his knife from the scabbard unless he draws blood with the naked blade. The unfailing courtesy of the Hindu forbade a continued refusal, and as I urged him the soldier at last slowly drew the blade from its sheath. He did not raise it for me to examine, nor did he lift his eyes to mine until he had pricked his hand between the thumb and first finger and raised a jet of his own red blood. Then only did I have the privilege of looking at his treasured weapon.

The Hindu warrior believes that to die in battle is to win at once a coveted eternity in Erewohne. He does not wish to be merely wounded, he desires death in fight rather than immunity from injury. He does not evade danger; rather he seeks it.

Shortly after this, at the great battle of Neuve Chapelle, where the British took over five miles of trenches and four miles of front from the enemy, the Hindu troops distinguished themselves in magnificent charges. They leaped out of the trenches almost before the word of command had reached their hearing. Fleet of foot and lithe of action, they had sprung into the enemy trenches and slashed the Hun to submission before the heavier white men had got across the intervening country. They were wonderful, full of dash and courage, but the difficulties of the situation called for an alteration of their fighting milieu.

Feeding these troops also was a matter of considerable moment. Their religion forbade the eating of any meat but that of the goat. These animals must be freshly killed and must be killed by the Hindu himself. This entailed the bringing up to the line of herds of live goats. In addition, many other formalities of food supply had to be taken into account.

With the most fervent thanks for the good work done on our western front, the authorities came to the conclusion that our cousins of the East would be even greater in service on one of our other fronts. They have gone since to Egypt, to Saloniki, to Mesopotamia, and to the East and West African fronts. They are playing a magnificent and unforgetable part in the world war. They have endeared themselves to the hearts of the folks at home and they have earned the lasting gratitude of all of us. They have defended their section of the empire as we have defended our northern part of the red splotches which mark Britain on the map.

I was sorry that the Indian regiments had to be removed from the west front, because, undoubtedly, they were the most feared by the Hun. The Indian was at his best in a charge, but at night he had an uneasy habit of crawling out of the trench toward Fritz, with his knife held firmly between his teeth. Before dawn he would return, his knife still in his teeth, but in his hand a German head.

To-day the Canadians in France are known by the enemy as the "white Ghurkas," and this, to us, is one of the highest compliments. The Ghurkas are considered bravest of the brave. Shall we not be proud to share a title such as this?

As the religion of the Ghurka follows him to the battle-field, so in a different sense does the religion of the white man. We have our thoughts, our hopes and our aspirations. Some of us have our Bibles and our prayer-books, some of us have rosaries and crucifixes. All of us have deep in our hearts love, veneration and respect for the sky-pilot—chaplain, if you would rather call him so. To us sky-pilot, and very truly so, the man who not only points the way to higher things, but the man who travels with us over the rough road which leads to peace in our innermost selves.

It does not matter of what sect or of what denomination these men may be. Out on the battle-field there are Anglican clergy, there are Roman Catholic priests, there are ministers of the Presbyterian, the Methodist, the Baptist and other non-conformist faiths. Creed and doctrine play no part when men are gasping out a dying breath and the last message home. The chaplain carries in his heart the comfort for the man who is facing eternity. We do not want to die. We are all strong and full of life and hope and power of doing. Suddenly we are stricken beyond mortal aid. The chaplain comes and in a few phrases gives us the password, the sign which admits us to the peaceful Masonry of Christianity. Rough men pass away, hard men "go West" with a smile of peace upon their pain-tortured lips if the padre can get to them in time for the parting word, the cheerful, colloquial "best o' luck."

Does the padre come to us and sanctimoniously pronounce our eternal doom should he hear us swear? The clergyman, the minister of old time, is down and out when he reaches the battle-fields of France, or any other of the fronts we are holding. No stupid tracts are handed to us, no whining and groaning, no morbid comments on the possibility of eternal damnation. No, the chaplain of to-day is a real man, maybe he always was, I don't know. A man who risks his life as do we who are in the fighting line. He has services, talks, addresses, but he never preaches. He practises all the time.

Out of this war there will come a new religion. It won't be a sin any more to sing rag-time on Sunday, as it was in the days of my childhood. It won't be a sin to play a game on Sunday. After church parade in France we rushed to the playing fields behind the lines, and many a time I've seen the chaplain umpire the ball game. Many a time I've seen him take a hand in a friendly game of poker. The man who goes to France to-day will come back with a broadened mind, be he a chaplain or be he a fighter. There is no room for narrowness, for dogma or for the tenets of old-time theology. This is a man-size business, and in every department men are meeting the situation as real men should.

Again, at Neuve Chapelle, there was magnificent bravery. Just across the street, at a turn, there lay a number of wounded men. They were absolutely beyond the reach of succor. A terrible machine gun fire swept the roadway between them and a shelter of sandbags, which had hastily been put up on one side of the street. By these sandbags a sergeant had been placed on guard with strictest orders to forbid the passing of any one, without exception, toward the area where the wounded lay. It was certain death to permit it. We had no men to spare, we had no men to lose, we had to conserve every one of our effectives.

As time wore on and the enemy fire grew hotter, a Roman Catholic chaplain reached the side of the sergeant. "Sergeant, I want to go over to the aid of those wounded men."

"No, sir, my orders are absolutely strict. I am to let no one go across, no matter what his rank."

The chaplain considered a moment, but he did not move from where he stood beside the sergeant.

A minute passed and a chaplain of the Presbyterian faith came up. "Sergeant, I want to go across to those men. They are in a bad way."

"I know, sir. Sorry, sir. Strict orders that no one must be allowed to pass."

"Who are your orders from?"

"High authority, sir."

"Ah!" The padre looked at the sergeant....

"Sorry, Sergeant, but I have orders from a Higher Authority," and the Presbyterian minister rushed across the bullet-swept area. He fell dead before he reached his objective.

"I, too, have orders from a Higher Authority," said the Roman Catholic priest, and he dashed out into the roadway. He fell, dead, close by the body of his Protestant brother. They had not reached the wounded, but Heaven is witness that their death was the death of men.

Hand in hand with the chaplains at the front is the Y.M.C.A. It is doing a marvelous work among the troops. The Y.M.C.A. huts are scattered all over the fighting front. Here you will find the padre with his coat off engaged in the real "shirt-sleeve" religion of the trenches. Here there are all possible comforts, even little luxuries for the boys. Here are concerts,—the best and best-known artists come out and give their services to cheer up Tommy. Here the padres will hold five or six services in an evening for the benefit of the five or six relays of men who can attend. Here are checker-boards, chess sets, cards, games of all sorts. Here is a miniature departmental store where footballs, mouth organs, pins, needles, buttons, cotton, everything can be bought.

"What's the place wid the red triangle?" asked the Irish soldier, lately joined up and only out, from a Scotch-Canadian who stood near by.

"Yon? D'ye mean to say ye dinna know the meaning o' thon? Why, mon, yon's the place whaur ye get a packet o' fags, a bar o' chocolate, a soft drink and salvation for twenty-five cents."

Yes; we get all that in the Y.M.C.A. huts where the padre toils and the layman sweats day and night for the well-being of the soldier men. In some of the huts it is actually possible to get a bath. It is always possible to get dry. 'Twas Black Jack Vowel, good friend Jack, who wrote over to tell us that there was no hut at one time near his front.

"Bad luck here, this time in. No Y.M.C.A. hut near. I was coming out last night for a turn in billets when I fell into a shell hole. It was pretty near full of water, so I got soaked to the neck, and I hit against a couple of dead Boches in it, too. Not nice. Reached the billet dripping wet. Have got a couple of sugar boxes, one at my head and one at my feet. Have coke brazier underneath. If I lie here about three hours and keep turning, I guess I'll be dry by then."

That's when no padre was handy to lead the way to a hut.

Can folk wonder why we love the padres, why we reverence the Y.M.C.A.? Can folk wonder why the men who used to look on such men as sissy-boys have changed their opinions? Can folk wonder that the religion which is Christian is making an impression on the soldier? Can folk deny the fact that this war will make better men?

Once again I mention Major the Reverend John Pringle. Best of pals, best of sports, best of sky-pilots! Many a time as we have been marching along we have met him. He would pick out a face from among the crowd, maybe a British Columbia man. "Hello! salmon-belly!" would good Major John peal out. Again, he would see a Nova Scotian: "Hello! fish-eater—hello, blue-nose!"

Then through us all would go a rush of good feeling and good heart. Through all of us would go a stream of courage and happiness and a desire to stand right with the man as he was.

"Hello! Sky-pilot!"



CHAPTER XI

VIVE LA FRANCE ET AL BELGE!

We had only been about ten weeks in France when we were moved out of the trenches and placed in Ypres in billets. Some of us were actually billeted in the city itself, and others of us had a domicil in the environs.

Ypres, or Wipers, as Tommy Atkins called it, was then considered a "hot" spot. The Germans say no one ever comes back from Ypres without a hole in him. Tommy says, when he curses, "Oh, go to ——; you can't last any longer than a snow ball in Ypres!"

At this time Ypres was not yet destroyed by the enemy. I have seen many cities of the world. I have seen the beauties of Westminster Abbey, the Law Courts; I have seen the tropical wonders of the West Indies; I have seen the marvels of the Canadian Rockies, but I have never seen greater beauty of architecture and form than in the city of Ypres. There was the Cloth Hall, La Salle des Draperies with its massive pillars, its delicate traceries, its Gothic windows and its air of age-long gray-toned serenity.

There was Ypres Cathedral! A place of silence that breathed of Heaven itself. There was its superb bell tower, and its peal of silver-tongued chimes. There were wonderful Old World houses, quaint steps and turns and alleys. It was a city of delight, a city that charmed and awed by its impressive grandeur.

Now the city was massed with refugees from the ravaged parts of Belgium. In peace times possibly the population would have numbered thirty-five to forty thousand, at this time it seemed that sixty thousand souls were crowded into the city limits. Every house, every estaminet, every barn, every stable was filled to its capacity with folk who had fled in despair before the cloven hoof of the advancing Hun.

Glance at the map on page 142 and judge of the condition of a city practically surrounded on all sides by the enemy. Three miles away to the left, three miles away to the right, and a matter of only ten miles away from the immediate front of the city. For months the Germans had shelled the town every day. Not with a continued violence, but with a continued, systematic irritation which played havoc with the strongest nerves. Not a day passed that two or three women, or half a dozen children or babies did not pay the toll to the war god's lust of blood.

But still the people remained in the city. There was no alternative. Conditions behind Ypres were just the same, and all the way back to Calais. Every town and every village, every hamlet and every farm had its quota of refugees. Here they stayed and waited grimly for the day of liberation.

One day I walked out from Ypres a few miles. I came to the village of Vlamentinge. I went into an estaminet and called for some refreshment. From among the crowd of soldiers gathered there a civilian Belgian made his way over to me. He was crippled or he would not have been in civilian clothes.

"Hello, old boy!" he said to me in perfect English. "How are you?"

I replied, but must have looked my astonishment at his knowledge of my language, for he went on to explain.

"I got over from the States just the week war broke out. I worked in North Dakota, and had saved up and planned to come over and marry my sweetheart, who waited in Brussels for me. I have not seen her. She must be lost in the passing of the enemy. I have gathered a very little money, enough to start on the small farm which is my inheritance. Come and see it—come and have dinner with me."

I accepted his invitation, and we walked over together. The Belgian spoke all the way of his fine property and good farm. All the while there was a twinkle in his eye, and at last I asked him what size was his great farm.

"Ten acres," said he, and laughed at my amazement at so small a holding.

We reached the house, which proved to be a three-roomed shack. In a little, dinner was served and we went in to sit down. Not only the owner and myself, but fifteen others sat down to a meal of weak soup and war bread. The other guests at the table were fourteen old women and one young girl. They sat in a steady brooding silence. I asked the Belgian if they understood English. They did not, and so I questioned him.

"Very big family this you've got," I remarked. I knew what they were, but just wanted to draw him out.

"Oh, they're not my family."

"Only visitors?" I queried.

"Darned good visitors," said he, "they've been here since the second week of August, 1914."

"Refugees—" I commented.

"Yes, refugees, not one with a home. Not one who has not lost her husband, her son or her grandson. Not one who has not lost every bit of small property, but her clothes as well. You think that I am doing something to help? Well, that is not much. I'm lucky with the few I have. There's my old neighbor over yonder on the hill. He owns five acres and has a two-roomed shack and he keeps eleven."

"And how long do you expect them to stay?"

"Why, laddie," said he. "Stay—how should I know? I was talking to an officer the other day and he told me he believed the first ten years of this war would be the worst. They are free and welcome to stay all that time, and longer if need be. They are my people. They are Belgians. We have not much. My savings are going rapidly, but we have set a few potatoes"—he waved his hand over to where four of the old women were hoeing the ground. "We get bread and a little soup; we have enough to wear for now. We shall manage."

That is only one instance in my own personal experience. Every place was the same. The people who could, sheltered those that had lost all. It was a case of share and share alike. If one man had a crust and his neighbor none, why then each had half a crust without questions.

It is for Belgium. It is to-day, in the midst of war and pillage and outrage, that man is learning the brotherhood of man. In peace times no man would have imagined the possibility of sharing his home and income, no matter how great it might have been, with fifteen other persons. The fifteen unfortunates would have been left to the tender mercies of a precarious and grudging charity. To-day, charity is dead in its old accepted sense of doling out a few pence to the needy; to-day, charity is imbued with the spirit of Him who, to the few said, "I was hungered and you gave me meat."

To-day, it is not necessary to go to Ypres, to Namur, to Liege, to Verdun, or to any of the bombarded cities of Belgium and France to see the ruin that has been wrought by war among the people. It is the populace who suffer, even in greater degree than do the fighting men. They must give way in every instance before the irresistible barrier of martial law. It is the old men, the women, the children, the babies and the physically imperfect who must bear the brunt of dreadfulness.

Go to any of the cities of France, a hundred or more miles from the firing line. Go to Rouen, to Paris, to the smaller inland towns, to St. Omer, to Aubreville, and there is war.

The streets and boulevards, which a few years since were gay with a laughing crowd of joyous-hearted men and women, youths and maidens, to-day are gloomy, with the shadow of sorrow and death on them. On a conservative estimate it will be found that in all the towns and cities of France, one in three women will be dressed in black.

The French woman carries through life the tradition of the veil. She is christened, and over her baby face there lies a white veil. She is confirmed, and a veil drapes her childish head. She is married, and a trailing lace veil half conceals her happy smiles. She mourns, and a heavy veil of black crape covers her from head to foot.

We of the Canadians learned to know the wonderful emotion of the French. As we marched along the streets we would see a Frenchwoman approaching us. She recognized the strange uniform of an Ally and her eyes would sparkle, and perchance she'd greet us with a fluttering handkerchief. The shadow of a smile would cross her face; she was glad to see us; she wanted to welcome us. And then she would remember, remember that she had lost her man—her husband, her son, her sweetheart. He had been just as we, strong and virile. He had gone forth to a victory that now he was never to see on earth. His had been the supreme sacrifice. She would pass us, and the tears would come to her eyes, and we'd salute those tears—for France.



And the men, what of them? There are no men. You will see old men, shaken and weak; possibly they have experienced the German as he was in 1870, and they know. You will see boys, eager strong boys, who impatiently await the call to arms. You will see young men who now look old. You will see them blind, and led about by a younger brother or sister. You will see the permanently crippled and those that wait for death, a slow and lingering death from the Hun's poisonous gases.



It is no uncommon sight to see the peasantry of France and Belgium, the old and young women, the children and the very old men, working in their fields and on their tiny farms, less than a mile from the trenches. It is their home. It is France or it is Belgium, and love of country and that which is theirs is stronger than fear of death. Some one of them may be blown to pieces as he works; it makes no difference. They do not leave as long as it is possible to remain, or as long as the Allied armies will permit them to stay.

Their houses may be leveled, they may only find shelter in a half ruined cellar. Often they may go hungry, but always there is a grim determination to stick to their own, to till the ground which has kept them, which has kept their parents and great-grandparents, and which they mean shall keep their children when victory, which they know is inevitable, is complete.

They have a wonderful faith.

The casualties of the French army have never been made public. We do not know them. It may be that they will never be told to a curious world. France may have had her body crushed almost beyond endurance, but the unspeakable Hun—the barbarian, the crusher of hope and love and ideals—has not even made a dent on the wonderful spirit of France.

France is superb. In the parlance of the man in the street, we all "take off our hats" to this valiant country.

I could tell of the most horrible things possible for human mind to conceive. I have seen things that, put in type, would sicken the reader. I do not want to tell of these things here, evidence of them can be had from any official document or blue-book. And yet, in justice to Belgium, I must tell some of the least dreadful of the things I have seen and only those that have come to me through personal experience. I do not tell from hearsay, and I tell the truth without exaggeration.

In common with thousands of other Canadian and Imperial soldiers I saw the evacuation and destruction of Ypres. On the morning of April 21, 1915, we marched along the Ypres-Menin road, which road was the key to Calais, to Paris, to London and to New York. We marched along in the early hours of the morning, just after dawn. To our left passed a continuous stream of refugees. We looked toward them as we went by. We saluted as they passed, but many of us had dimmed vision.

We had heard of German atrocities. We had seen an isolated case or two as we marched from town to town and village to village. We had not paid a great deal of attention to them, as we had considered such things the work of some drunken German soldier who had run riot and defied the orders of the officers. Though we had certainly seen one or more cases that had impressed us very deeply. The case I cited earlier in this book never left my thoughts. But here on the king's highway, we saw German atrocities on exhibition for the first time. I say exhibition, and public exhibition, because it was the first time we had seen atrocities in bulk—in numbers—in hundreds.

Ypres had been destroyed in seven hours, after a continuous bombardment from one thousand German guns. It was a city of the dead. The military authorities of the Allies told the civilians they must leave. They had to go, there was no alternative. The liberation they had hoped for was in sight, but their road to it was of a roughness unspeakable.

There was the grandfather in that procession, and the grandmother,—sometimes she was a crippled old body who could not walk. Sometimes she was wheeled in a barrow surrounded by a few bundles of household treasure. Sometimes a British wagon would pass piled high with old women and sick, to whom the soldiers were giving a lift on their way.

There was the mother in that procession. Sometimes she would have a bundle, sometimes she would have a basket with a few broken pieces of food. There was a young child, the baby hardly able to toddle and clinging to the mother's skirts. There was the young brother, the little fellow, whimpering a little perhaps at the noise and confusion and terror which his tiny brain could not grasp. There was the baby, the baby which used to be plump and smiling and round and pinky white, now held convulsively by the mother to her breast, its little form thin and worn because of lack of nourishment.

There was no means of feeding these thousands of helpless ones. Their only means of sustenance was from the charity of the British and French soldiers, who shared rations with them.

And there was sister, the daughter—sister—sister. At sight of these young girls—from thirteen up to twenty and over—we learned, if we had not learned before, that this is a war in which every decent man must fight. Some Americans and Canadians may not want to go overseas; they may be opposed to fighting; they may think they are not needed. Let them once see what we saw that April morning and nothing in the world could keep them at home.

They dragged along with heads low, and eyes seeking the ground in a shame not of their own making. I am conservative when I say that one in four of the hundreds of young girls who walked along in that sad crowd had a baby, or was about to have one.

And that was not the only horror of their situation. Many of them had one or the other arm off at the elbow. They had not only been ruined, but mutilated by their barbarous enemies.

That evening we camped just outside the city of Ypres. We rested all night, and the next day we went into action. During the afternoon of April twenty-second the Germans, for the first time in the history of warfare, used poisonous gas. And they used it against us as we lay there ready to protect the Ypres salient.



CHAPTER XII

CANADIANS—THAT'S ALL

Less than three months before this we were raw recruits. We were considered greenhorns and absolutely undisciplined. We had had little of trench experience. At Neuve Chapelle we had "stood by." At Hill 60 we had watched the fun. But our discipline, our real mettle, had not yet been put to the test.

That evening of the twenty-second of April when we marched out from Ypres, little did any of us realize that within the next twenty-four hours more than one-half of our total effectives were to be no more.

I feel sure that our commanders must have been nervous. They must have wondered and asked themselves, "Will the boys stand it?" "How will they come out of the test?"

We were about to be thrown into the fiercest and bitterest battle of the war. There were no other troops within several days' march of us. There was no one to back us up. There was no one else, should we fail, to take our place. "Canadians! It's up to you!"

I could tell of several stirring things that happened to other battalions during that night, but I am only telling of what I saw myself, and it will suffice to write of one most stirring thing which befell the Third.

As we crossed the Yser Canal we marched in a dogged and resolute silence. No man can tell what were the thoughts of his comrade. We have no bands, nor bugles, nor music when marching into action. We dare not even smoke. In dark and quiet we pass steadily ahead. There is only the continued muffled tramp—tramp—of hundreds of feet encased in heavy boots.

To the far right of us and to the far left shells were falling, bursting and brilliantly lighting up the heavens for a lurid moment. In our immediate sector there were no shells. It was all the more dark and all the more silent, for the noise and uproar and blazing flame to right and left.

We were on rising ground now. Up and up steadily we went. We reached the top of the grade, when suddenly from out of the pit of darkness ahead of us there came a high explosive shell. It dropped in the middle of our battalion. It struck where the machine gun section was placed, and annihilated them almost to a man.

Then it was that our mettle stood the test. Then it was that we proved the words Canadian and Man synonymous. Not one of us wavered; not one of us swerved to right or left, to front or back. We kept on. There was hardly one who lost in step. The commanders whispered in the darkness, "Close up the ranks." The men behind those who had fallen jumped across the bodies of their comrades lying prone, and joined in immediately behind those in the forward rows.

The dead and wounded lay stretched where they had fallen. Coming behind us were the stretcher-bearers and the hospital corps. We knew our comrades would have attention. This was a grim business. We pressed on.

There was a supreme test of discipline. It was our weighing time in the balance of the world war, and we proved ourselves not wanting. We were Canadians—that's all.

That afternoon the gas came over on us. The Germans put gas across on us because they hated us most. It is a compliment to be hated by the Germans. Extreme hatred from a German in the field shows that the hated are the most effective. They hated the French most at first, they hated the Imperial British, they hated us; they have hated the English again; soon, when the United States comes to her full effectiveness, she will take her place in the front rank of the hated.

We Canadians were a puzzle to them. When we went into the trenches at first, the enemy would call across the line to us, "What have you come over here to fight us for? What business is it of yours? Why did you not stay back home in Canada and attend to your own affairs, and not butt into something that does not concern you? If you had stayed at home in your own country, WHEN WE CAME OVER AND TOOK CANADA, we would have treated you all right. Now that you have interfered, we are going to get you some day and get you right."

Yes; when they came over and took Canada. That was the very reason we were fighting. We wanted to keep our own part of the empire for ourselves. It is ours absolutely, and we had no intention that Germany should own it. We knew exactly what the Hohenzollern planned to do. If France were subdued, if England were beaten on her own ground, then Canada would be a prize of war. We preferred to fight overseas, in a country which already had been devastated, rather than carry ruin and devastation into our own land, where alone we would not have had the slightest chance in the world for beating Germany.

In the front lines of the Ypres salient was the Third Brigade, made up of Canadian Highlanders, whom the Germans, since that night have nicknamed "The Ladies from Hell." In this brigade were men from parts of Nova Scotia, Montreal, from Hamilton, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver.

To the left of these lay the Second Brigade of Infantry. These were men for the most part from the West. There was the Fifth, commonly known as the "Disappointed Fifth," from Regina, Moose Jaw and Saskatoon. There was the Eighth, nicknamed by the Germans "The Little Black Devils from Winnipeg." The Tenth, the famous "Fighting Tenth," with boys from Southern Alberta, mainly Medicine Hat and Calgary and Lethbridge. And there was the Seventh of British Columbia.



It was the Second Brigade which the First was supporting. To the left of the Eighth Battalion, which was the extreme Canadian left wing, there were Zouaves and Turcos. These were black French Colonials. To these unfortunates, probably the Canadians owe their near disaster.

In the far distance we saw a cloud rise as though from the earth. It was a greeny-red color, and increased in volume as it rolled forward. It was like a mist rising, and yet it hugged the ground, rose five or six feet, and penetrated to every crevice and dip in the ground.

We could not tell what it was. Suddenly from out the mist we men in reserves saw movement. Coming toward us, running as though Hell as it really was had been let loose behind them, were the black troops from Northern Africa. Poor devils, I do not blame them. It was enough to make any man run. They were simple-minded fellows. They were there to fight for France, but their minds could not grasp the significance of the enemy against whom they were pitted. The gas rolled on and they fled. Their officers vainly tried to stem the flying tide of them. Their heels barely seemed to touch the ground. As they ran they covered their faces, noses and eyes with their hands, and through blackened lips, sometimes cracked and bleeding, they gasped, "Allemands! Allemands!"

Some of our own French-speaking officers stopped the few running men they could make hear, and begged of them to reform their lines and go back to the attack. But they were maddened as only a simple race can be frenzied by fear, and paid no heed.

It is in times like this, in moments of dire emergency, that the officer of true worth stands out, the real leader of men. There were a dozen incidents to prove this in the next few hurried, desperate moments. None can be more soul-stirring than the quick thought, quick action and foresight displayed by our own captain. He did not know what this smoke rushing toward our lines could be. He had no idea more definite than any of us in the ranks. But he had that quick brain that acts automatically in an emergency and thinks afterward.

"Wet your handkerchiefs in your water-bottles, boys!" he ordered.

We all obeyed promptly.

"Put the handkerchiefs over your faces—and shoot like the devil!" he panted.

We did this, and as the gas got closer, the handkerchiefs served as a sort of temporary respirator and saved many of us from a frightful death. We in the reserves suffered least. Yet some of us died by that infernal product. A man dies by gas in horrible torment. He turns perfectly black, those men at any rate whom I saw at that time. Black as black leather, eyes, even lips, teeth, nails. He foams at the mouth as a dog in hydrophobia; he lingers five or six minutes and then—goes West.



Marvelous is the only word to describe the endurance, the valor of the Ladies from Hell. They withstood the gas, and they withstood wave after wave of attacking German hordes. And yet even their wonderful work was overtopped by that of the Eighth, which, being exposed on the left by the black troops who had fled, had to bear the brunt of a fight which almost surrounded them.

It was wonderful. I shall never forget it. There were twelve thousand Canadian troops. In the German official reports after the battle, they stated that they had used one hundred and twenty thousand men against us, and one thousand guns. We had not one gun. Those that we had were captured when the African blacks had left. It was our strength against theirs—no, it was white man's spirit against barbarian brutality.

For six days and nights that terrible death struggle continued. Every man was engaged: cooks, doctors, stretcher-bearers, chaplains, every one of us held a rifle. The wounded who had to take their chance of living because there was no way to convey them back to shelter—some of them would sit up, if they possibly could, to load and load again rifles which they lifted from dead comrades. They would hand us these as our rifles got too hot to hold. And still the German attacks persisted. Still they came on. And still we did not budge an inch from our position as it was when the gas first came over. They did not gain a yard, though when the British reserves at last reached us, there were only two thousand of us left standing on our feet; two thousand of us who were whole from out the twelve thousand that had started in to repel the attack.

The two thousand of us were still in the old position. Still we held in our safe-keeping the key of the road to Calais, to Paris, to London and farther. The key to world power which the Hohenzollern coveted.

Behind Ypres to-day there lie four thousand five hundred of the flower of the Canadian contingent. Four thousand five hundred young men who made the extreme sacrifice for King, for Flag, for Country, for Right. They lie in their narrow beds of earth, and over them wave the shading leaves of maple trees. For thoughtful citizens sent over and had planted "Canada's little maple grove"—a monument in a strange country to the men who fought and died and were not defeated.

On the night of April twenty-second, General Alderson and his officers saw that the situation was desperate. They thought to save their men. The general sent up the command: "Retire!"

The word first reached the Little Black Devils. The men heard it, the officers heard it, and they looked over the flattened parapet of their trench. They saw the oncoming hordes of brutes in a hellish-looking garb, and they sent back the answer: "Retire be damned!"

The general, the officers, rested content. With a spirit such as these men showed even against desperate odds, nothing but victory could result.

The gas and the attacking waves of men poured on. We were not frightened. No; none of us showed fear. Warfare such as this does not scare men with red blood in their veins. The Germans judge others by themselves. A German can be scared, a German can be bluffed. They thought that we were of the same mettle, or lesser. At the Somme we put over on the enemy the only new thing that we have been able to spring during the whole three years—the tanks. Were they scared? They were terrified! They dropped rifles, bayonets, knapsacks, everything—and ran. Had not our tanks stuck in the awful mud of France, or had they a trifle more speed, I believe it might have been possible for us to have reached Berlin by this time.

It was because we could not be frightened that General French, then Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, cabled across the world on the morning of the twenty-third of April, "The Canadians undoubtedly saved the situation."

No word of definite praise, no eulogy, no encomiums. Just six words—"The Canadians undoubtedly saved the situation."

The night of April twenty-second was probably the most momentous time of the six days and nights of fighting. Then the Germans concentrated on the Yser Canal, over which there was but one bridge, a murderous barrage fire which would have effectively hindered the bringing up of reinforcements or guns, even had we had any in reserve.

During the early stages of the battle, the enemy had succeeded to considerable degree in turning the Canadian left wing. There was a large open gap at this point, where the French Colonial troops had stood until the gas came over. Toward this sector the Germans rushed rank after rank of infantry, backed by guns and heavy artillery. To the far distant left were our British comrades. They were completely blocked by the German advance. They were like rats in a trap and could not move.

At the start of the battle, the Canadian lines ran from the village of Langemarcke over to St. Julien, a distance of approximately three to four miles. From St. Julien to the sector where the Imperial British had joined the Turcos was a distance of probably two miles.

These two miles had to be covered and covered quickly. We had to save the British extreme right wing, and we had to close the gap. There was no question about it. It was our job. On the night of April twenty-second we commenced to put this into effect. We were still holding our original position with the handful of men who were in reserves, all of whom had been included in the original grand total of twelve thousand. We had to spread out across the gap of two miles and link up the British right wing.

Doing this was no easy task. Our company was out first and we were told to get into field skirmishing order. We lined up in the pitchy darkness at five paces apart, but no sooner had we reached this than a whispered order passed from man to man: "Another pace, lads, just another pace."

This order came again and yet again. Before we were through and ready for the command to advance, we were at least twice five paces each man from his nearest comrade.

Then it was that our captain told us bluntly that we were obviously outnumbered by the Germans, ten to one. Then he told us that practically speaking, we had scarcely the ghost of a chance, but that a bluff might succeed. He told us to "swing the lid over them." This we did by yelling, hooting, shouting, clamoring, until it seemed, and the enemy believed, that we were ten to their one.



The ruse succeeded. At daybreak when we rested we found that we had driven the enemy back almost to his original position. All night long we had been fighting with our backs to our comrades who were in the front trenches. The enemy had got behind us and we had had to face about in what served for trenches. By dawn we had him back again in his original position, and we were facing in the old direction. By dawn we had almost, though not quite, forced a junction with the British right.

The night of April twenty-second is one that I can never forget. It was frightful, yes. Yet there was a grandeur in the appalling intensity of living, in the appalling intensity of death as it surrounded us.

The German shells rose and burst behind us. They made the Yser Canal a stream of molten glory. Shells fell in the city, and split the darkness of the heavens in the early night hours. Later the moon rose in a splendor of spring-time. Straight behind the tower of the great cathedral it rose and shone down on a bloody earth.

Suddenly the grand old Cloth Hall burst into flames. The spikes of fire rose and fell and rose again. Showers of sparks went upward. A pall of smoke would form and cloud the moon, waver, break and pass. There was the mutter and rumble and roar of great guns. There was the groan of wounded and the gasp of dying.

It was glorious. It was terrible. It was inspiring. Through an inferno of destruction and death, of murder and horror, we lived because we must.

Early in the night the Fighting Tenth and the Sixteenth charged the wood of St. Julien. Through the undergrowth they hacked and hewed and fought and bled and died. But, outnumbered as they were, they got the position and captured the battery of 4.7 guns that had been lost earlier in the day.

This night the Germans caught and crucified three of our Canadian sergeants. I did not see them crucify the men, although I saw one of the dead bodies after. I saw the marks of bayonets through the palms of the hands and the feet, where by bayonet points this man had been spitted to a barn door. I was told that one of the sergeants was still alive when taken down, and before he died he gasped out to his saviors that when the Germans were raising him to be crucified, they muttered savagely in perfect English, "If we did not frighten you before, this time we will."

I know a sergeant of Edmonton, Alberta, who has in his possession to-day the actual photographs of the crucified men taken before the dead bodies were removed from the barnside.

Again I maintain that war frightfulness of this kind does not frighten real men. The news of the crucified men soon reached all of the ranks. It increased our hatred. It doubled our bitterness. It made us all the more eager to advance—to fight—to "get." We had to avenge our comrades. Vengeance is not yet complete.

In the winter of 1914-1915 the Germans knew war. They had studied the game and not a move was unfamiliar to them. We were worse than novices. Even our generals could not in their knowledge compare with the expertness of those who carried out the enemy action according to a schedule probably laid down years before.

We knew that on the day following the terrible night of April twenty-second we must continue the advance, that we dare not rest, that we must complete the junction with the right wing of the British troops. And the enemy knew it, too.

We expected that the Germans would be entrenched possibly one hundred or even two hundred yards from our own position, but not so. His nearest entrenchment was easily a mile to a mile and a half across the open land from us.

The reason for this distance was simple enough. We had succeeded in our bluff that we had many hundreds more of men than in reality was the case. The enemy calculated that had we this considerable number of troops we would capture his trenches, were he to take a position close in, with one short and mad rush. He further calculated that had we even a million men, he would have the best of us if we attempted to cross the long, open flat land in the face of his thousands of machine guns.

April twenty-third was one of the blackest days in the annals of Canadian history in this war, and again it was one of the most glorious. That day we were given the task of retaking the greater part of the trenches which the Turco troops had lost the day preceding.

We lay, my own battalion, easily a mile and a half from the German trench which was to be our objective. About six o'clock in the morning we set out very cautiously, with Major Kirkpatrick in command. C and D Companies were leading, with a platoon or two of B Company following, comprising in all about seven hundred and fifty men. At first we thought the advance would be comparatively easy, but when we entered the village of St. Julien, the German coal boxes were falling all around us. So far our casualties were light.

To the left of the village we formed in field skirmishing order—about five paces apart—but before the formation of five successive lines or waves was completed, each man was easily eight paces away from his nearest mate instead of five. We were told that our objective was an enemy trench system about four hundred yards in length.

It is impossible to convey in words the feeling of a man in such a situation as this. Apparently none of us actually realized the significance of what we were about to undertake. Probably it was because we were no longer in the trenches, and because we had been out and in the open all the night before.

We stood there waiting. Overhead there was the continuous "Crack, crack, crack!" of enemy machine gun and other bullets. It was evident that we had already traversed a mile of our way, and that only half a mile lay ahead of us. The enemy bullets were flying high. I heard no command; I do not think any command was given in words, but of a sudden we heard a "Click!" to the left. No one even glanced in the direction. Every man fixed his bayonet. The man on the extreme left had fixed his, the "Click" had warned his comrades eight paces away, and the ominous sound, ominous for Hans and Fritz, "Click, click, click!" ran along the lines.

The advance had started. In front were our officers, every one of them from junior to senior, well ahead of their men. A wave of the hand, a quarter right turn, one long blast of the whistle and we were off. We made mad rushes of fifty or sixty yards at a time, then down we would go. No place to seek cover, only to hug Mother Earth.

Our lads were falling pretty fast; our officers even faster. To my left Slim Johnstone got his; ahead of me I saw Billy King go down. I heard some one yell out that Lieutenant Smith had dropped. In the next platoon Lieutenant Kirkpatrick fell dead. A gallant lad, this; he fell leading his men and with a word of cheer on his lips.

We were about two hundred yards from the enemy's trench and my estimation is that easily one-third of our fighting men were gone. Easily eighty per cent. of our officers were out of the immediate game. Right in front of our eyes our captain—Captain Straight—fell. As he went down he blew two short blasts on his whistle, which was the signal to hug the earth once more. And we dropped.

The officers and men who had been hit had begun their weary crawl back to the dressing station; that is, all of them who were able to make the effort. We saw that Captain Straight made no attempt to move. Some of us crept up to his side.

"Hit in the upper leg," he whispered in reply to the queries.

"Go back, sir, go back!" we urged, but Captain Straight was obdurate. He had made up his mind that he was going to see the thing through, and stick to it he would no matter what the cost to himself. He realized that only by some super-human effort would we now be able to take the enemy trench. The machine gun fire was hellish. The infantry fire was blinding. A bullet would flash through the sleeve of a tunic, rip off the brim of a cap, bang against a water-bottle, bury itself in the mass of a knapsack. It seemed as though no one could live in such a hail of lead. But no one had fallen down on the task of the day. Each battalion was advancing, with slowness and awful pain, but all were advancing.

Captain Straight knew how we were placed for effectives, both in officers and men. He knew how we adored him. He lay a few minutes to get his breath, then attempted to stand, but could not, as one leg was completely out of commission. He dragged himself along with his hands, catching hold of the tufts of grass or digging his fingers into the soft earth. He made thirty or forty yards in this way, then one long blast of his whistle and we rushed ahead, to fall flat on a level with him as he sounded the two-blast command. Probably ten times he dragged himself forward, and ten times we rushed and dropped in that awful charge. The captain gritted his teeth, for his pain must have been horrible. He waved his arm as he lay and waited ahead of us—"Come on, lads—come on!" And we came.

I don't know what other men may have felt in that last advance. For myself, the thought flashed across my mind—"What's the use? It is certain death to stay here longer; why not lie down, wait till the worst is over and be able to fight again—it is useless, hopeless—it is suicide to attempt such a task." Then just ahead of us I saw Captain Straight crawling slowly but surely, and through the "Zing!" of bullets I heard his voice, fainter but still earnest and full of courage, cry out: "Come on, lads—come on!"

He was one of the first to roll over into that improvised German trench.

No, we could not have failed; we could not have stopped. As one of our young boys said afterward: "Fellows, I'd have followed him to Hell and then some!"

It was Hell all right, but no matter; we had gone through it, and got what we had come for—the German trench.

Out of the seven hundred and fifty of us who advanced, a little over two hundred and fifty gained the German trench; and of that number twenty-five or more fell dead as soon as they reached the enemy, and got that revenge for which they had come.

I doubt if there will again be a battle fought in this war where the feeling of the men will be as bitter as at St. Julien. Men were found dead with their bayonets through the body of some Hun, men who had been shot themselves thirty yards down the field of advance. Their bodies were dead, as we understand death, but the God-given spirit was alive, and that spirit carried the earthbound flesh forward to do its work, to avenge comrades murdered and womanhood outraged. It was marvelous—it may have been a miracle. It was done, and for all time has proved to the boys who fought out there the power of the spirit over the flesh.

We had seen atrocities on the Belgians the day before. We had seen young girls who were mutilated and horribly maltreated. We had been gassed, we had seen our comrades die in an awful horror. We had had our sergeants crucified, and we were outnumbered ten to one. After all this, and after all the Hell through which we had passed from six that morning until after two, when we reached the enemy trench and presented the bright ends of our bayonets, Mr. Fritz went down on his knees and cried, "Kamerad! Kamerad!"

What did we do? We did exactly what you would have done under like circumstances. "Kamerad!"—Bah!

There is no doubt that the German soldier is a good soldier as far as he goes. He is good in a charge and if he had not done the despicable things—the dreadful outrages which he has done—he could be admired as a fighting machine. But there is one department where we of the Allies have him licked to a frazzle. Talk to any man who has been out there and he will say the same. The German soldier can not hold in a hand-to-hand fight. He can't face the cold steel. The second he glimpses the glint of a bayonet he is whimpering and asking for mercy.

The German bayonet is a fiendish weapon. It is well its owner can not use it. For myself I do not know of one case where a comrade has been wounded by enemy steel. His bayonet is longer than ours, and from the tip for a few inches is a saw edge. This facilitates entrance into the body, but on turning to take it out it tears and rends savagely.

It is impossible to describe the work of every battalion in a battle. In a charge, a concerted charge, such as we went through on April twenty-third, there was not one battalion that did better than another. There was not one officer who did better than another, there was not one man who outdistanced his fellow in valor. We all fought like the devil. It is only possible to convey the doings of the whole by telling the achievements of the few.

Boys of the Fourth Western Ontario Battalion, commanded by Colonel Birchall of St. Catharines, who came through this business, have told me that their colonel lined them up and made a short speech to them. He took them into his confidence. He told them that the whole battalion should advance together; that he did not think it good policy to leave any part in reserve. He said: "I am going to lead you, boys; will you come?"

There was a sonorous "Aye, aye, sir!" along the ranks.

Colonel Birchall pulled his revolver from its holster, looked at it a moment and then threw it to the ground. Then he took his small riding switch and hung the loop over the first finger of his right hand.

"Ready, boys!" he cried, and twirling the little cane round and round, he strode ahead.

It was a terrible piece of work. On every side shells and bullets were falling. Men went down like ninepins at a fair. But always ahead was the colonel, always there was the short flash of his cane as it swished through the air. Then he was hit, a bullet in the upper right arm. He did not stop; he did not drop the cane.

"On, boys, on!" And the men stumbled up and forward.

Seven times Colonel Birchall was a mark for enemy fire. Seven times fresh wounds gushed forth with his life's blood. He was staggering a little now, but never a falter; on and on he went, the little cane feebly waving.

Men say that at times the lines seemed to waver and almost to break; that the whole advancing force, small and scattered though it was, seemed to bend backward as cornstalks in wind, but always they saw the colonel ahead and recovered balance.

Colonel Birchall fell dead on the parapet of the German trench, but he got what he had come after. His men were with him. There were seven hundred and more dead and wounded in the battalion, but the trench was theirs and Fritz was again begging for mercy.

There are stories, wonderful stories of stirring things done by the several battalions, but it is not possible to give them in detail. Men made undying names in this battle, names which will go down through the ages as have the names of other British soldiers. There was Brigadier-General Turner, who is now Major-General, of the Third Brigade. There was Lieutenant-Colonel, now Brigadier-General, Watson of the Second Battalion, who, together with Lieutenant-Colonel Rennie, now Brigadier-General, of the Third Battalion, reinforced the Third Infantry Brigade. These two were of the First Brigade. Then there came the Seventh Battalion, which is the British Columbia Regiment of the Second Brigade, and the Tenth Battalion, also of the Second.

Lieutenant-Colonel Boyle commanded the Fighting Tenth, and gave his life in the advance. The Sixteenth Battalion Canadian Scottish were under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Leckie, who has since become Brigadier-General. The Tenth had many losses. Major MacLaren, second in command, died in hospital shortly after being taken there, and Major Ormond was wounded. Major Guthrie is another man who carried the Tenth forward to more triumphs. Brigadier-General Mercer, Lieutenant-Colonel Morrison, Captain T.E. Powers are others, and Lieutenant-Colonel, since Brigadier-General, Lipsett, commanded the Ninetieth Winnipeg Rifles, whose men suffered severely from gas.

Major Norsworthy was killed while trying to bring up reinforcements. He endeavored to reach Major McCuiag, who had the great misfortune, after doing marvelous work and saving an almost desperate situation, to be taken prisoner by the enemy. Men of the Seventh Battalion were Colonel Hart-McHarg, Major Odlum and Lieutenant Mathewson. The Second Brigade was under command of Brigadier-General Currie, who now is the Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces.

Lieutenant-Colonel, now Brigadier-General, Armstrong, commanded the Engineers, but crowning all of these names is that of our beloved Commander-in-Chief at the time, General Alderson.

Ten thousand names more could be added to this gallant roll of honor. At the beginning of the battle of Ypres our lines were a little over twelve thousand strong, and after six days and nights of fighting there remained two thousand of us standing. We had practically not budged an inch. The Germans had not broken our line, our one thin, straggling, far-stretched line. We remained the victors of Ypres.

Perhaps our greatest reward came when on April twenty-sixth the English troops reached us. We had been completely cut off by the enemy barrage from all communication with other sectors of the line. Still, through the wounded gone back, word of our stand had drifted out. The English boys fought and force-marched and fought again their terrible way through the barrage to our aid. And when they arrived, weary and worn and torn, cutting their bloody way to us, they cheered themselves hoarse; cheered as they marched along, cheered and gripped our hands as they got within touch with us. Yell after yell went upward, and stirring words woke the echoes. The boys of the Old Country paid their greatest tribute to us of the New as they cried: