e wooden floor, and I was just beginning to succumb to the
soothing influences of my own poetry, when I thought I felt little
things crawling over my face. It was too much for me. I got up and
said, "I think I am getting crummy, so I'm going off." I looked in on
the General and the Brigade Major, and then climbed up the steps and
went to the machine-gun hut.

The night was now well advanced so it was time to shave and get ready
for zero hour. A little after five we had some breakfast, and about a
quarter past I went up to the top of the bank above the road and
waited for the barrage. At 5.20 the savage roar burst forth. It was a
stupendous attack. Field guns, heavy guns, and siege batteries sent
forth their fury, and machine-guns poured millions of rounds into the
country beyond the Canal. So many things were flying about and landing
near us, that we went back under cover till the first burst of the
storm should subside. At that moment I knew our men were crossing the
huge ditch, and I prayed that God would give them victory. When the
barrage had lifted I started down towards the Canal, passing through a
field on my way where I found, lying about, dead and wounded men. Four
or five were in a straight line, one behind another, where a German
machine-gun must have caught them as they advanced. A young officer of
the 2nd Battalion was dying from wounds. Two or three decorations on
his breast told his past record in the war. While I was attending to
the sufferers, a sergeant came up to me from the direction of the
Canal and asked the way to the dressing station. He had a frightful
wound in his face. A bit of a shell had dug into his cheek, carrying
off his nose. He did not know at the time how badly he had been hit. I
asked him if he wanted me to walk back with him, but he said he was
all right as the dressing station was not far off. I often wondered
what became of him, and I never heard till the following year when a
man came up to me in the military hospital at St. Anne's, with a (p. 310)
new nose growing comfortably on his face and his cheek marked with a
scar that was not unsightly. "The last time I met you, Sir," he said,
"was near the Canal du Nord when you showed me the way to the dressing
station." I was indeed glad to find him alive and well, and to see
what surgical science had done to restore his beauty.

I went on to the Canal, and found that at that point it was quite dry.
I climbed down to the bottom of it