at the
first day was a fortunate one. I thanked God that it was so, and the
officers were as cheerful as if they had been at a ball game and had
won it. They said they had put several German snipers out of
business. They drank my health in cocoa and we all hoped that my next
birthday would be spent at home with all the officers and men with me
safe and sound.

It is wonderful how careless of danger people become. In the afternoon
while I was out riding the Huns started shelling the station and town.
Half a dozen British Howitzers 9.2 inch guns started to reply. The
German high explosive shells, or "Hiex" as they were called there,
were falling five or six hundred yards off, still the children were
playing in the street and a bunch of little girls were skipping with a
rope. That night there were several outbursts of rifle fire, and it
sounded very much as if an attack was taking place in the section of
the trenches held by the Royal Montreal Regiment.

When we got up the next morning the sun was shining very brilliantly.
A big British naval gun had opened fire on the German lines, and
overhead two aeroplanes were sailing about directing the fire of the
naval gun. The Germans had opened fire on the aeroplanes with anti-air
craft guns, and their shells were bursting high in the air in white
puffs like Japanese fireworks. We took our field glasses out to the
square in front of our billet and could follow the course of the air
craft quite plainly. After each one of our shells fell the plane would
shoot a rocket as a signal. The German air craft shells fell hundreds
of yards short. The aeroplanes soon rose to such a height that the
German guns quit firing on them. The British naval planes were
beautiful large craft. On the frontier we had already established air
preponderancy and were also doing well now with our artillery.

About five o'clock Colonel Levison-Gower sent a guide to take me to
the ruined Chateau near the trenches where he had his headquarters.
Captain Darling and Major Marshall and Surgeon Major MacKenzie
accompanied me. We took our horses as the Chateau was about two miles
down the road. The road wound along like a serpent with about every
second house on either side blown up with shell fire or the walls
peppered with rifle bullets. The British guns were growling on either
side. This is an old historic road. Many a time William the Silent,
Count Alva, and the great Marlboro galloped along it. Lille, the gre