led three and wounded six, and no doubt we would have
gotten one had we stayed. It's funny how things happen--our
Sergeant-Major was badly wounded, and I helped to carry him to a place
of comparative safety, but the poor fellow died after his wounds were
dressed. We buried the dead as best we could, and then we hung on for
two days more. We had no water and scarcely any food, and we suffered
terribly, especially from thirst. Our ration parties were all killed
trying to get food to us. Bink and some of the boys on the outpost
were relieved first, and they brought us water. Poor lads, they had
been sitting on an old culvert with water up to their waists. The only
sleep we got all this time was during the day when we lay in the mud at
the bottom of the trench. We were relieved on the third night, and oh,
what joy when the 29th came in and took over the trench! We were "all
in," and we staggered back to Ypres throwing away everything we carried
except our rifles. When we got to Ypres, we found that we had to go
back to where we had started from, so we struggled on. On the way we
met a bunch of Lancashire men. "What do you belong to?" they asked us
as they passed. "We are all that is left of a Canadian battalion," we
replied. "Gorblimey, it's bleedin' orful," said they. Just as day was
breaking we hit camp. The Quartermaster gave us a drink of rum, and
the cooks had a feed ready, and we got our blankets and turned in. We
slept till the afternoon, and then we had to answer a muster call. Two
hundred and seventy-two was all that was left of what, three days
before, had been a battalion one thousand strong. Tears rolled down
our old Colonel's face as he looked at us. "My boys! my boys!" was all
he could say. We were only out twenty-four hours, and during that time
we read our mail, wrote a few letters, and opened our parcels. There
were parcels everywhere, many of them belonging to boys who had been
either killed or wounded, and these were distributed among those that
remained. We were dead-tired and we were hoping for a good long rest,
when in marched a big bunch of reinforcements, and shortly after we
received orders to pack up and be ready to move that night. It was
raining when we started out, and oh! we did feel rotten to have to go
back to that hell-hole again. But the new fellows didn't know what it
was like, and we laughed and joked with them. Bob Tait and I were
carrying No. 10's rations; and we