the ditches. They are trimmed off about twelve or fourteen feet above
the ground and the new branches that sprout out from their trunks
provide faggots for firewood as well as withes for the manufacture of
chairs, baskets and hampers. The faggots are sometimes placed in
earthen pits and burned into charcoal, providing an excellent fuel for
the interesting Dutch stoves found in the kitchens in this country.

For several days our guns had been registering on the enemy. That is
to say, our artillery observing officers would go into the trenches
with a telephone connected up with their batteries. Then the battery
fires a shot at the enemy's parapets, generally well over. He reports
the hit right or left, and then the range is reduced until the object
is hit. That range direction and elevation is recorded in a register
at the gun. The man who sets the gun does not see the object he is
firing at at all, but he knows when his gun is trained in a certain
line at a certain elevation he will hit that part of the enemy's
parapet. We had all kinds of guns ready for the fray. The Canadian
sixty pounders under Major McGee a few days before had smashed up the
brown tower of Fromelles. This tower had been used by the Germans for
an artillery observing station, and for several months the British had
been firing at it without success. In about three shots McGee's guns
got the tower and a half dozen shells reduced it to a hopeless ruin so
that it was of no use to anyone. The church tower of Aubers followed
suit. When the British Tommies heard the "birr" of the five-inch
Canadian shells they all asked whose they were. The Scots thought they
had come from Scotland. When they saw Aubers tower disappear in a
cloud of dust they inquired again, "What bally gunners are those?"
When told they were the Canadians, they said, "Bravo, Canadians, you
are some class," and cheered heartily. This gave our gunners a
reputation that lasted for the rest of the war.

Besides our five-inch guns we had our eighteen pounder batteries lined
up and down behind us, also horse artillery guns from India and an
armoured train manned by the navy. They had long six-inch guns that
threw a terrible projectile. We had also some new fifteen-inch
howitzers that had been brought over from England. "Grandmas" they
called these guns because they were short and stout. "Grandma" when
fired only gave a low grunt, but when her shell broke four or five
miles off, it burst with a