d.
We relieved the King Edward Horse who were acting, as was all the
cavalry, as infantry.

My crew, together with Sandy McNab's, was assigned to an old Belgian
farm called Captain's Post. The place was pretty well shot up but we
managed to clear out enough room to give us very good quarters; by far
the best we had had since leaving England. We were some 1,250 yards
from the enemy lines but in plain sight of them, hence it was
necessary to be very careful not to allow any one to move about
outside the buildings in daytime, nor to make any smoke.

No doubt some one got careless, for about noon the next day we heard
the long-drawn-out "who-o-o-o-i-s-s-s-h" of a big shell coming. It
struck about twenty-five yards behind our building and failed to
explode; in soldier's parlance, it was a "dud." We were eating dinner
and refused to be disturbed. Then came a steady stream of the big
fellows; to the right, to the left, in front of the building and,
finally, "smack," right into the house. Altogether, they put
thirty-two "five-point-nine" (150 mm.) shells into that one old
building and all the damage they did was to ruin our dinner by filling
the "dixie" with mud. How in the world we escaped has always been a
mystery to me, but later on, after other and worse affairs, the men
called it "McBride's luck." They shelled us pretty regularly, after
that, sometimes just two or three shells, but on at least one
occasion, they evidently had made up their minds to put the place out
of business entirely, for they kept up a continuous bombardment, with
guns of at least three calibers, for more than an hour. At that time I
was a corporal and had twelve men, with two guns at this place, yet,
although nearly every one was hit by pieces of brick and mud and
covered with dust, not a man was hurt nor a gun injured.

[Illustration: Canadians with Machine Gun Taking Up New Positions.]

One morning, just after daylight and during a fog, I was up in an old
hay-loft where we had a gun, when I heard a cock pheasant "squawking"
(that's the only word that describes it), out in front. Looking from
the gun position I saw him, standing on the parapet of an abandoned
French trench across the road. I could not resist the temptation, so
took a shot at him, with the result that we had pheasant stew for
dinner that day.

It was a source of never-ceasing wonder to me that the birds and other
forms of wild life seemed to be so little affected by the continua