too good for the Canadians. Her grand-daughter, a
tall good looking girl of Spanish descent, twenty-one years of age,
had been married seven months when the war broke out, and her husband,
an artillery man, had been killed. Three times a day during that first
year did the girl go to church to pray for the safety of her husband,
for she would not believe him dead.

I was wakened the very first night at my new billet, about 2 a.m., by
the rat-a-tat of a kettle-drum, and two dreary notes continuously
repeated by a bugle. It was the alarm for a fire at a farmhouse about
half a mile from town. Our men from the hospital helped to get most of
the furniture out, and were standing around watching the farmhouse and
barns burn down, when the 17 Brigade Lancers appeared with the hand
hose-reel, which, however, proved to be useless. The Lancers had
broken into the fire hall and stolen the apparatus.

The local firemen afterwards came to the fire hall but found the
engine gone; after some discussion they went home and donned their
white duck trousers, blue tunics, and polished brass helmets. The fire
chief and first deputy then had a dispute about something which
resulted in the deputy going home in a huff, while the chief and the
second deputy (the whole fire brigade) resplendent in their spotless
uniforms of white, blue and gold, marched out to the fire. The British
soldiers lined up when they saw them coming, and gave them three
rousing cheers, while one of the Tommies solemnly swept the road
before them with a broom. As my chauffeur "Rad" said, "It was just
like a scene from a blinking comic opera."

The area was now well known to us, for, in the course of our work, we
had been over every bit of road in it. It was very noticeable how the
farmhouses along some roads, which paralleled the front line trenches
about one and a half miles behind it, gradually disappeared. On Monday
perhaps we would have to go down to a certain battery located on this
road, and there would be a dozen intact farmhouses in the course of a
half mile. On Friday of the same week, one or more of them would be
burned down, while the shell holes in the fields and road around them
indicated deliberate concentration of fire.

Our work was interesting and we kept busy all the time. The monotony
of working seven days a week, however, becomes very great after a few
weeks and seriously affects the health and the ability to work. In the
other army services work ca