e we lined a
roadside and commenced digging another trench.

Here we lay and shivered all night, the men crouching in the trench,
every fourth man alert and watching, the officers lying on the ground
behind in shell holes or walking up and down swinging their arms and
trying to keep warm. It was only one night of many.

The Germans continued to discharge gas against our line until May 15th,
when they retook Hill 60. The bitter struggle of the past three weeks
had begun as a mere counter-attack to our capture of this small but
important mound.

By this time, however, the Canadians had been withdrawn, and we left the
salient with few regrets. But somewhere on the German side of our trench
line there are thousands of graves of our fellow-countrymen, and when
the time comes for the balancing of accounts we shall expect these to
weigh heavy in the scales.

Our brigade was the first to be relieved, marching out on the night of
May 3rd, wondering vaguely where we were going, and also, perhaps, what
would become of our friends "Ox-eye" and "Freckleface," with their
stolid faces, their ample bosoms, and their square hips.

CHAPTER XII

BAILLEUL

Our next stop was Bailleul, a town of some fifteen thousand inhabitants
just over the Franco-Belgian frontier. Possibly it was never known
before the war, but it is now, for sooner or later everyone goes to
Bailleul: it was, until the taking over of the line below Arras, the
Mecca of the British Army.

But it was fifteen weary miles from Brielen, fifteen miles that we
stumbled over in a drizzling rain on slippery cobblestones before
turning up through an archway off the main street to our billets. Good
billets they were, too--a loft with ample straw for one platoon, a
school-house for the other three, and houses on another street for the
officers.

In spite of the early hour, about 3 o'clock, Madame was up and around
and soon made us fresh coffee and the inevitable omelette; then we
clattered up the steep little stairs to bed. F----, the sergeant who had
been promoted, joined us here and proved a jolly good sort. We went out
to hunt up new billets the next day. He, being a Quebecker, acted as
interpreter, as our room was too small and stuffy for two, and,
moreover, looked into the operating-room of a hospital opposite.

We were fortunate in finding another billet quite close--an important
point, as we were to mess together--and then took a stroll around the
town.