one back in the line on
the first of October and, early the next morning, our brigade, Fourth
Canadian, took part in one of these attacks. Our battalion did not go
"over the top," but Bouchard and I stuck our gun up on the parapet and
helped support the advance, which was made by the Nineteenth
Battalion. It was our first experience of that kind and was, to say
the least, interesting. The enemy kept up an incessant rifle and
machine-gun fire on our position, the bullets were snapping around our
heads like a bunch of fire-crackers and the mud was flying everywhere,
but that little seventeen-year-old "kid" kept feeding in belts and all
the while whooping and laughing like a maniac. It certainly cheered me
up to have him there. The whole thing was over in about twenty minutes
but, during that short time, we had learned something which can be
learned in no other way--that it is possible for thousands of bullets
to come close to you without doing any harm. From that time on,
neither Bouchard nor I ever felt the least hesitation about slipping
over the parapet at night to "see what we could see."

During this tour we were subjected to considerably more shelling than
on the first occasion, and one morning Fritz made a mistake with one
of his shells intended for "our farm," as we called the buildings in
the rear, and dropped it "ker-plunk" right into one of our dug-outs.
It was a place we had fixed up for cooking, and we were all outside,
but it certainly made a mess of our "kitchen furniture." Then they
shot up our communication trench until it was positively dangerous to
go up and down it for rations and ammunition. Narrow escapes were
numerous, but our luck held, and we went out the night of the eighth
without having sustained a casualty. The battalion did not fare so
well, having quite a number of wounded, but none killed.

That was our last visit to those trenches, as we marched, that night,
away to the northward. "Eeps" was the word that went up and down the
line, that being the Flemish pronunciation of Ypres, (in French
pronounced "Ee-pr" and in Tommy's English, "Wipers"). We had a hard
march; in the rain, as usual; and, about daylight, stopped at the town
of LaClytte, which was to be the battalion's billeting place for
several months. The rest of the battalion remained there a few days,
resting, but the Emma Gees went on ahead and took over some support
positions at Groot Vierstraat and along the Ypres-Neuve Eglise roa