This night the Germans caught and crucified three of our Canadian
sergeants. I did not see them crucify the men, although I saw one of the
dead bodies after. I saw the marks of bayonets through the palms of the
hands and the feet, where by bayonet points this man had been spitted to a
barn door. I was told that one of the sergeants was still alive when taken
down, and before he died he gasped out to his saviors that when the Germans
were raising him to be crucified, they muttered savagely in perfect
English, "If we did not frighten you before, this time we will."

I know a sergeant of Edmonton, Alberta, who has in his possession to-day
the actual photographs of the crucified men taken before the dead bodies
were removed from the barnside.

Again I maintain that war frightfulness of this kind does not frighten real
men. The news of the crucified men soon reached all of the ranks. It
increased our hatred. It doubled our bitterness. It made us all the more
eager to advance--to fight--to "get." We had to avenge our comrades.
Vengeance is not yet complete.

In the winter of 1914-1915 the Germans knew war. They had studied the game
and not a move was unfamiliar to them. We were worse than novices. Even our
generals could not in their knowledge compare with the expertness of those
who carried out the enemy action according to a schedule probably laid down
years before.

We knew that on the day following the terrible night of April twenty-second
we must continue the advance, that we dare not rest, that we must complete
the junction with the right wing of the British troops. And the enemy knew
it, too.

We expected that the Germans would be entrenched possibly one hundred or
even two hundred yards from our own position, but not so. His nearest
entrenchment was easily a mile to a mile and a half across the open land
from us.

The reason for this distance was simple enough. We had succeeded in our
bluff that we had many hundreds more of men than in reality was the case.
The enemy calculated that had we this considerable number of troops we
would capture his trenches, were he to take a position close in, with one
short and mad rush. He further calculated that had we even a million men,
he would have the best of us if we attempted to cross the long, open flat
land in the face of his thousands of machine guns.

April twenty-third was one of the blackest days in the annals of Canadian
history in this war, and again it was one