pied by dead and
wounded, had regained the barricade.

But we had another surprise awaiting them. A field-gun had been
man-handled up to our front line and at point-blank range proceeded to
blow the barricade to bits. This was done and the gun successfully
withdrawn by a car from a motor-machine-gun battery, in spite of the
fact that the first car sent for this purpose had to be hauled from the
ditch into which it had skidded.

So thorough had been the preparations, and so well organised the raid,
that an account of it was published in the orders of the French Army as
an example of efficient preparation.

The prisoners taken in the Petite Douve affair had boasted of the
preparations they were making for a gas attack on a scale hitherto
unknown, and on the Sunday before Christmas the enemy made another
attempt to gain the Ypres salient by this means.

Early in the morning of the 20th the smell of gas was evident even down
as far as our position a few miles south of the salient, and our guns
began a desultory bombardment of the enemy lines. Thinking we were as
deficient in artillery as in the previous April, the enemy infantry
advanced in mass formation about 9 o'clock. Then our artillery did open
fire. About noon another attack was made, and also failed without a yard
of our line being lost.

There were no further attempts!

On Christmas Eve we were relieved by the Toronto Battalion and marched
out to rest billets in divisional reserve.

It was a weird march out. Not a rifle was fired nor a single flare shot
up from either trench as the two battalions interchanged.

We wondered if on the morrow there would be the handshaking and
hymn-singing that had characterised the first Christmas of the war; a
routine order had been published forbidding such demonstrations of good
feeling, but it was hardly necessary--flame projectors and asphyxiating
gas had attended to that!

Everything was very peaceful in the little hamlet when we arrived,
however. It was a clear, starlit night, a little snow in the fields, and
the dark silhouettes of the houses and church loomed up against the
clear sky. The little church was in darkness--no midnight mass was being
sung this year--and we slipped into our various billets in silence, very
tired and not a little homesick.

Christmas Day the men were marched into Bailleul, where a big dinner was
given them by the officers of the battalion. In the evening another
dinner was held for the