On the twenty-second day of April the very essence of spring was in
the air; I felt as if I had to go out into the open and watch the
birds and bees, loll in the sun, and do nothing. We struggled along
until noon with our routine work, and having completed it Captain
Rankin and I left for Ypres. A soldier had been transferred to us, and
as we did not need him we decided to register a formal protest and see
if he could not be kept with his present unit. Our road lay through
Dickiebush and we made good time, again reaching Ypres about two
o'clock.

It was quite evident to me as I retraversed the streets of Ypres that
it had been heavily shelled since I had been there a few days before.
Many more houses had been smashed, and unmended shell holes were seen
in the roads. As we crossed the Grande Place there was scarcely a
soldier visible. The Cloth Hall, which the Captain had not seen
before, showed further evidences of shell fire. After viewing the
ruins we drove to the little restaurant kept by the pretty milliners,
only to find that the place had completely disappeared--literally
blown to atoms. Later on we found that a fifteen-inch shell had landed
in the building next door and both houses had simultaneously vanished.
A well known officer, Captain Trumbull Warren of the 48th Highlanders,
Toronto, coming out of a store on the opposite side of the square had
been killed by a flying fragment of the same shell.

We wondered whether the milliners had escaped, and somewhat depressed,
drove along in search of another restaurant. A sign "Chocolat" on a
door in a side street made us inquire, and, curiously enough, we found
this also to be a little restaurant kept by two other milliners. They
informed us that the first three milliners had escaped when the
bombardment began, and before their restaurant had been blown up.
One's interest in a place or in a battle is often in direct proportion
to the number of one's friends or acquaintances there.

After lunch we drove to Brielen, but found that the A.D.M.S., whom we
were in search of, and his deputy were both out. We were shown maps of
the salient, and had the area pointed out to us where the French
joined up with the second and third brigades of Canadians, and where
the British troops joined up with the Canadians. When about to leave,
a friend, Major Maclaren of the 10th Infantry battalion, riding a
mettlesome horse, rode up and I got out of the car and held the bridle
while we