were "connecting file"--that is, we
kept in sight of the platoon behind. It was raining so hard that we
were soon soaked to the skin, and we were glad when they stopped at
Ypres that night. Bob and I missed the platoon in front, they went
into some dugout, so we went in with the rear platoon. We were
billeted in what had been an old wine cellar. The house which had been
there before the war was blown down, and from the outside it looked
like nothing but a pile of bricks. Bob and I were in a little place by
ourselves; we knew that it was useless to try and find our own platoon
in the dark. We had nothing but a stone slab to sleep on, and it
didn't look very inviting to stretch out there in our wet clothes. I
was just preparing to lie down when Bob said, "Wait a minute, see what
I found," and he held up a bottle of rum. Gee, I could have kissed
him!--we had a good drink, and maybe we weren't glad that we carried
the rations that night. We had a fine sleep in spite of the artillery
thundering overhead. Every now and then a heavy German shell would
land right on top of our sleeping-place, but it couldn't break through.
The concussion would put out the candles, that was all. That night,
the First Division of Canadians and some British troops made their big
counter-attack; and took back all the ground that the Germans had taken
in the previous nine or ten days.

Bob and I woke up next morning and had our breakfast, and after awhile
we wandered out around town. Some German prisoners were coming down
the road, and we stopped and spoke to them. One who could speak a
little English said, "Too much shell." They were very hungry; one of
them spotted a piece of biscuit beside the road. He grabbed it up and
ate it like a dog. All at once we heard a shout, and turning we spied
Bink and Charlie Pound. When they got up to us they said, "Where the
devil have you fellows been? We want our rations." They seemed quite
peeved and they hadn't worried a bit about losing us. It was not
having their rations that bothered them.

Well, that night we went back to the same trenches that we had left
just three nights before, only this time we marched on the Ypres-Menin
road. This is the worst road in the salient; the Germans sweep it with
their machine guns every night, and it sure is wicked. Of course Rust
had been over it months before and knew all about it. He told us that
the bullets come about a foot from the ground, and