eing shelled daily, hanging on desperately to the old
homes, not knowing when a shell might come through the roof and kill
them all. That was brought home to me later on when, as I passed
through a village one afternoon, I saw three women being dug out of
the cellar of a house in which a shell had exploded a minute before.
On another occasion in a village close by a mother with her babe at
her breast, three children of various ages, the husband and the
grandmother, were all killed in one room by a German shell, the walls,
ceiling and floor being splattered with blood and brains. And so it
goes on day after day among the civilians in the shelled area in
France. Most of them escape but many of them pay the price.

CHAPTER VII.

THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES.

It was a glorious spring day on Saturday, April 17th, 1915, when I
motored to Ypres. The first Canadian Contingent had gone into the
salient several days before, and had now settled down to business in
the trenches. Our laboratory had been given permission to keep a check
on the purity of the water supply of the Canadians; hence this trip
from our laboratory, located twenty miles away in another part of the
line.

The cobble stone or pave road between Poperinge and Ypres was like a
moving picture to our, as yet, unsatiated eyes. Here a small party of
soldiers marched along quickly; there three blue-coated French
officers, with smartly-trimmed moustaches, cantered by on horseback; a
pair of goggled despatch riders on throbbing motor cycles dashed along
at terrific speed, leaving long trails of dust behind them; a string
of transport waggons with hay and other fodder, crept along leisurely;
a motor ambulance convoy sped past with back curtains up, showing the
boots of the recumbent wounded, or the peering faces of the sitting
cases with heads and arms bound in white linen; some old women arrayed
in their best dresses, and with baskets on arms, were coming from
market gossiping volubly; boys and girls garbed in the universal
one-piece black overdress of the country, played games on the
roadside; an armoured-motor machine gun halted beside the children to
make some adjustment; great three-ton lorries lumbered along;
officers in touring cars, sometimes with red and gold staff hats, flew
by, taking salutes with easy nonchalance, while we, with ears and eyes
wide open, bowled along towards the famous city of Ypres.

It was war,--apparently an easy going, leisurel