was dreadful! I
saw piles of Huns, dead and wounded, the latter waving like a shock of
hay with some one underneath it trying to get out. Their officers, in the
rear, shot down man after man who tried to run. They drove them forward
like bullocks to the slaughter, for many of the Germans were too confused
to shoot and scores had thrown away their rifles. Suddenly the K. R. R.'s
machine guns became silent. For a few seconds the rifle fire became faster
and more furious. Then it stopped. Steel bayonets glinted as the K. R.
R.'s charged. There was no mercy shown. There were no prisoners taken. Of
the five thousand Germans, who had gone out to do murder in cold blood, I
do not believe five hundred got away. They were practically annihilated.
The bayonets finished the work that the machine guns and rifles had
started. What would you have? Men would not spare a nest of venomous
snakes. It was a just retribution, but my stomach turned at it. None who
had not seen it could even picture the sight.

For the next few days we had it "cushy," except for boche shrapnel
showering our trenches at intervals, daily.

The cold, however, had increased enough to cause much discomfort. It was
always cold, and especially so when there was a fierce wind and the rain
drenched us. It was the common thing for the men to be up to their knees
in water and slush.

We had been almost two weeks in this position when we noticed queer
happenings in a farm house a few hundred yards behind our lines. The
watchfulness of our officers revealed the significance of some apparently
trifling things.

In the daytime, the shade on a window facing the German line would
frequently be moved. Sometimes it would be drawn the full length of the
window; then, if the German artillery had been pounding away at our right
flank, immediately it would switch in the direction of our batteries.
Sometimes the shade would be only half way down. More than once I saw a
woman at this same window; and sometimes she would be leading a cow about
some distance behind our lines. At night a light would be seen now and
again moving past the window.

Agents of the British Intelligence Department, summoned to the front by
our officers, discovered that a complete system of signalling was carried
on between the people in the isolated farm house and the Germans. Three
men and a woman were marched out of the house and taken away. After that,
our concealed batteries, in new positions, hadn't