lessly.
These men had no illusions as to what they would probably have to face;
but none guessed that there lay ahead the most dreadful test of physical
endurance which the old battalion, since the great retreat, had ever
known.

II

_The Bluff_

What had happened was this. Soon after our division had been moved back
to the rest area, part of the line which it had been holding was
strongly attacked and lost to the enemy. Several counter-attacks failed,
and finally our own Division was brought back from rest to recapture
the lost trenches. One brigade attacked with great dash and success. The
lost trenches were re-occupied, and our own brigade, which had been
lying in support, was ordered to take over and hold them against the
expected counter-attacks. The Bluff, which was the main feature of the
position and the worst part of which The Royals, as the senior
battalion, were given to hold, was a low hill jutting out at the
re-entrant to the Salient, south-east of Ypres. It was a strong tactical
position commanding the approaches to our trenches, as the enemy well
knew. Seen from our front line farther south it had the dead, bleak
appearance of all ground that is much shelled. Pitted by high explosive,
burned yellow by fumes of gas and shells, and stripped of every living
thing, with blackened stumps of trees sparsely scattered on its summit,
this muddy hillock dominated the flat lands, and, on the sunny morning
when I first saw it, seemed indescribably sinister and menacing. It said
to me, 'I am war, the antagonist of everything clean and comely, of
everything fresh and young: misery of mind and body, torment of kindly
earth and all its little growing things, lover of all that is foul and
dead.'

III

_'We've keepit up the reputation o' the auld mob, onyway'_

That night the weather suddenly changed. There had been a hint of spring
in the air, but in an hour that was wiped out by a bitter north wind
sweeping the bare fields with icy rain and snow. The transport, pitched
in the filthy morass known as 'Scottish Lines,' saw its labour of three
weeks thrown away in a couple of nights. For the human beings there were
a few tents and huts, but in face of the searching wind canvas seemed
quite porous, and the huts were badly built and had a hundred openings
to the bitter air. But up at the Bluff conditions were terrible. The
trenches had disappeared under repeated bombardments, and had become
mere chains of shell ho