t, as there was work for us to do that night, until the joyful sound
of "Tea up!" and the smell of hot "Maconachie" rations told us that
supper was ready.

At 7 o'clock the battalion fell in to move up to the front line and dig
some trenches. Hardly were we formed up when another violent shelling
started, and we hurried back to the cover of our funk-holes.

Again the shelling was singularly ineffective, due, probably, to the
fact that the enemy was using high explosive and not shrapnel. One shell
by an unfortunate chance caught an artillery limber full of ammunition
on the roadway, and it blew up with a sickening roar. The double report
of this explosion evidently satisfied the German gunners, for a few
minutes later the bombardment ceased and we again fell in.

The greatest secrecy was observed, and nobody but the guides knew our
destination, and we followed them in silence up the shell-pitted road
and across the pontoon bridge that spanned the Yser Canal. Various dark
forms hobbled past, their baggy trousers showing them to be Algerians. A
French outpost challenged us, and a party of Ghurkas passed us leading
pack horses with the bodies of their fallen officers lashed across the
saddles. The Ghurkas never leave an officer's body on the field, so the
sergeant in rear of the platoon ahead informed us.

On either side of the road was a ruined trench, and even in the weird
half-light of the flares we could see what a shambles they had become.
The road was well called "Suicide Alley!"

Then suddenly we left the road and took to the open fields on the left,
passing a trench occupied by some Imperial troops--it was our own first
line trench. Then we knew what our work was to be; we were to dig an
advance trench to link up with the French on our left and the English on
our right. The advance continued up a gentle slope across which--nearly
a thousand yards of bare bullet-swept field--the Ghurkas had a day or so
previously tried to charge. The bodies still lay there in rows just as
they had fallen under the bursts of fire that mowed them down--pitiful
huddled figures in the grass staring ahead into the great void. Few of
the faces showed signs of suffering--such is the mercy of the rifle
bullet; and so great was the resemblance to sleep that later, when we
came to retire, the writer and others shook the bodies mistaking them
for our own men.

In the midst of this ghastly scene, lit up by fitful glances of
moonlight as cl