im I would get a
stretcher, so I went to some trenches not far away and got a bearer
party and a stretcher and went over to rescue him. The men jumped down
into the trench and moved him very gently, but his legs were so numb
that although they were hit he felt no pain. One of the men asked him
if he was only hit in the legs. He said, "Yes," but the man looked up
at me and pulling up the boy's tunic showed me a hideous wound in his
back. They carried him off happy and cheerful. Whether he ever
recovered or not I do not know. If he did and ever sees this book, I
wish he would write and tell me how he is.

That was our last attack at Paschendaele. Our Division had taken its
final objective. The next morning, the infantry were to come out of
the line, so in the late afternoon I returned with some stretcher
bearers. Several times shells came near enough to splatter us with
mud, and here and there I turned aside to bury those for whom graves
had just been prepared.

At the front that day, a runner and I had joined in a brief burial
service over the body of a gallant young officer lying where he fell
on the side of a large shell-hole. As I uttered the words--"I am the
Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord," it seemed to me that the
lonely wind bore them over that region of gloom and death as (p. 229)
if it longed to carry the message of hope far away to the many sad
hearts in Canada whose loved ones will lie, until the end, in unknown
graves at Paschendaele.

CHAPTER XXIV. (p. 230)

OUR LAST WAR CHRISTMAS.

Our Division moved back to Barlin and I was once more established in
my old billet. As our artillery were still at Ypres, I determined to
go back on the following day to the Salient. I started in a car the
next morning at six, and arrived at Talbot House, Poperinghe, in time
to have breakfast with Padre Clayton, who was in charge of that
splendid institution. Then I made my way to Ypres and found my son at
his battery headquarters under the Cloth Hall Tower. It was a most
romantic billet, for the debris of the ruins made a splendid
protection from shells, and the stone-vaulted chambers were airy and
commodious, much better than the underground cellars in which most of
the men were quartered. The guns of the battery were forward in a very
"unhealthy" neighbourhood. The officers and men used to take turns in
going on duty there for twenty-four hours