blinkin' 'ard to lose both you and Mac, but 'up the line with the best
of luck,' old cock." But I must explain why I had to go. An order
came asking all Canadians who were working with the Royal Engineers
(which was an Imperial unit) to transfer at once to the Canadian
Engineers at Ypres. This did not sound very good to us, as the Ypres
salient was known as a pretty hot place. However, as military rules
say, "Obey first and complain afterwards," there was nothing for us to
do but go. We were sorry, also, to leave before the completion of our
mine at Kemmil--but we heard afterwards that when it was set off it
turned the wood literally upside down. When we arrived at Ypres we
found things very different to what they were at Kemmil--instead of
mine laying we were put into a protection sap; this was only twenty
feet down and consisted of a network of tunnels for the protection of
our own lines against the German sappers. My first duty was on
"listening-post" in one of these tunnels, the hole where I was being
just large enough to lie in, and it seemed almost like being buried
alive. Here I did not get my twenty-four hours' rest as at Kemmil, but
I worked on a six-hour shift and had only ten hours off; even then we
were not sent back to rest billets, but had to stay in the dugout at
the top of the shaft. At the end of seven days we were supposed to be
sent back to rest billets, and another shift would take our place.
Fritzie had been unusually quiet since we came, and we began to think
that the stories we heard were greatly exaggerated.

However, on the morning of the seventh day we changed our minds. We
had gone to work at eight o'clock feeling unusually good--we expected
to be relieved at seven that night, and we had been promised a seven
days' leave to Blighty, so I could hardly wait for the day to pass.
Instead of being put on "listening-post" this morning, the Corporal in
charge took me with him--we went down a long tunnel till we reached the
end, and the Corporal put a listening-tube to his ear; he listened a
few minutes, and then handed it to me and whispered, "Do you hear
anything?" I said, "Yes, I hear some one shovelling." He said, "I
heard them yesterday, and I think they are close enough for us to get
now, we will lay a torpedo for them here," so we got to work to dig a
place for our torpedo, and after working for half an hour or so our
candles went out. Then we noticed that the number of shells falli