f the Y.M.C.A. we had
tea, and then set out to visit the huts in the vicinity. It was a novel
experience, for every hut was empty. The reason was not far to find. The
troops were in their camps formed up in marching order, and later in the
evening we watched them march out to take part in the great offensive.
We were told that the barrage was timed for 3.50 in the morning, and
were asked to have our work for the walking wounded ready at 5 A.M., so
we determined to spend the night on the top of Kemmel Hill, the highest
hill in Flanders. It was just after midnight when we reached the summit
of the hill; and we wondered if the barrage had not already commenced,
so heavy was the firing. From our point of vantage we could see the
whole of the sector, from Armentieres in the south, across the
battlefields of Messines and Wytschaete and away beyond Ypres in the
north. Silently, close to us, an observation balloon stole up in the
darkness, and a few minutes later as silently descended. Involuntarily
we ducked as a monster shell shrieked overhead, and some one cried,
'There goes the Bailleul Express!' About 3 A.M. things began to quiet
down. Our guns might have been knocked out; they were hardly replying at
all to the enemy's fire. Later on we saw a series of signal flashes high
up across the battlefield, and then at 3.50 promptly to the moment, the
barrage began, and there was no possibility of mistaking it--two
thousand guns, as we learned afterwards, all firing at the same time. As
one looked at that hell of flame and bursting shell, one felt it was
impossible for any life to continue to exist beneath it, and one thought
of the boys, as steady as if they had been on parade, creeping up behind
that barrage of fire. We had seen them as they left their camp the night
before, and we saw them when they returned--some of them--during the two
days following the barrage; not in regiments a thousand strong, with
colours flying and bands playing, but dribbling back one or two at a
time--the walking wounded--and each one came in to our little Y.M.C.A.
tents attached to the clearing stations--one was at an island in a sea
of mud, near Dickebusch huts in Flanders. There was a queue inside of
two or three hundred men. Every man in that queue was wounded, and
waiting to have his wounds attended to; every man was hungry until he
entered that tent; every man plastered from head to foot with the most
appalling mud, and unless one has seen the mu