What had happened in the charge I
did not know. I can honestly state that my mind is a blank for the period
of time which elapsed after I ran the first fifty yards toward the
boches.

I was sitting on the fire-step. We had taken their trenches and had been
recalled after our troops from the rear had gone forward to prepare the
captured position against the counter attack which would surely come.

My chum, Jock Hunter, was sitting near me.

"Blow 'Coffee up,'" he said to me, laughing. I thought he had lost his
senses. I stared at him blankly.

"Blow 'Coffee up,'" he repeated, pointing to my side.

I glanced down at my hip. There was a battered bugle hanging from a cord
over my shoulder. I was more bewildered than ever, but I unslung the
instrument and we examined it. It was a bugle of the Potsdam Guards and
there were thirteen bullet holes in it.

Jock would not believe that I did not know how I came by the thing, and
you may find it difficult, too, to accept my statement, but it is a fact.
I do not know how I got it. The period of the charge is a slice of my life
which is completely gone from my memory. I do not know what sights I saw
nor what sounds I heard.

On our first Sunday in this position, the German artillery became quiet
about ten o'clock, and, about half an hour later, we heard strains of
music from beyond the slightly risen ground on Fritz's lines. They were
holding a Sunday service. But as soon as it was over, we were greeted with
a couple of hundred shells from their artillery, so we came to the
conclusion that the sermon must have been rotten.

The weather conditions here were so bad that a number of our fellows were
sent to the base hospital with frost-bite, or what is known now as "trench
feet." They suffered excruciating pain. I saw one fellow who had to have
his shoe cut off; the foot swelled up instantly to very great size and was
almost entirely black.

As a supposed protection against the conditions which had caused so many
cases of "trench feet" some bureau expert over in England had a supply of
rubber boots forwarded to us. I have seen many things which were useless
supplied to soldiers but never anything to equal these boots. They were so
loose and clumsy that they materially interfered with the action of
walking and they were just of a height to be entirely submerged in the
trench mud, leaving the wearer with an individual and separate bucketful
of the stuff to lift with each foot. I