ansport was strung along the roads leading
from Ypres and we knew that the division was out for a rest. We hunted
out some of our friends in Bailleul,--some of the few that were left.
There were 7 of the 25 officers in the 3rd (Toronto) battalion and 6
out of the 25 in the 48th Highlanders of Toronto, though the missing
ones had not all been killed. They were greatly changed in
appearance, were very tired, and could tell little of their
experiences in any connected way; at that time they had simply a
succession of blurred impressions; they could recall a terrible
excitement but had little idea of the sequence of events. The men,
sitting around the streets of Bailleul in the sun, looked as if they
had seen and experienced more than they could ever tell.

One of my officer comrades had gone insane, and another had been so
shell shocked that he was of no further use and had been sent to
England,--the latter was one of those officers whom I had seen in the
little club house at Winnezeele. Two of my friends had been buried out
in the front one night with two other officers--all in the one shell
hole.

The medical officer, Captain Haywood, conducted the burial without
candle or book. The green white light from the German flares and the
red flashes of the guns was the only light to show the sad little
party where their erstwhile comrades rested. The lay parson, exhausted
with seventy hours' continuous work, and unable to recall a single
word of the burial service, broke huskily into this rugged
commendation, "Well, boys, they were four damn good fellows; let us
repeat the Lord's prayer," but they couldn't manage to say even the
Lord's prayer among them.

What a setting for a soldier funeral! The black night, the roar and
flash of the guns and the green flare of the German star shells
silhouetting those bowed heads above the soldiers' grave. What a
fitting tribute to a soldier! The broken voice with the rough and
ready words of praise: "They were four damn good fellows." What more
could be said? What more would any soldier desire?

One chap had seen General Mercer, with his aide-de-camp by his side,
crossing a fire-swept field deliberately stop in the middle of it to
light his pipe. Everybody agreed that the General was the coolest man
in sight that day. The Aide himself assured me that it took several
matches to light the General's pipe and that the matches were the
slow-burning variety; he said that it seemed to him to h