nservative when I say that one in four of
the hundreds of young girls who walked along in that sad crowd had a baby,
or was about to have one.

And that was not the only horror of their situation. Many of them had one
or the other arm off at the elbow. They had not only been ruined, but
mutilated by their barbarous enemies.

That evening we camped just outside the city of Ypres. We rested all night,
and the next day we went into action. During the afternoon of April
twenty-second the Germans, for the first time in the history of warfare,
used poisonous gas. And they used it against us as we lay there ready to
protect the Ypres salient.

CHAPTER XII

CANADIANS--THAT'S ALL

Less than three months before this we were raw recruits. We were considered
greenhorns and absolutely undisciplined. We had had little of trench
experience. At Neuve Chapelle we had "stood by." At Hill 60 we had watched
the fun. But our discipline, our real mettle, had not yet been put to the
test.

That evening of the twenty-second of April when we marched out from Ypres,
little did any of us realize that within the next twenty-four hours more
than one-half of our total effectives were to be no more.

I feel sure that our commanders must have been nervous. They must have
wondered and asked themselves, "Will the boys stand it?" "How will they
come out of the test?"

We were about to be thrown into the fiercest and bitterest battle of the
war. There were no other troops within several days' march of us. There
was no one to back us up. There was no one else, should we fail, to take
our place. "Canadians! It's up to you!"

I could tell of several stirring things that happened to other battalions
during that night, but I am only telling of what I saw myself, and it will
suffice to write of one most stirring thing which befell the Third.

As we crossed the Yser Canal we marched in a dogged and resolute silence.
No man can tell what were the thoughts of his comrade. We have no bands,
nor bugles, nor music when marching into action. We dare not even smoke. In
dark and quiet we pass steadily ahead. There is only the continued muffled
tramp--tramp--of hundreds of feet encased in heavy boots.

To the far right of us and to the far left shells were falling, bursting
and brilliantly lighting up the heavens for a lurid moment. In our
immediate sector there were no shells. It was all the more dark and all the
more silent, for the noise and uproa