ery big man, about six feet four in his stockings, with a width
of chest and shoulder that is found nowhere in the world so
plentifully as in the valley of the Ottawa River and in Canada's
Glengarry County. His towering form would loom up everywhere in the
trenches at night, and along with him generally came young Pepler,
another intrepid youngster, who was never quite at home unless he was
in the most dangerous spot in the trenches, or out in front examining
the German wire at close range. Wright was a born leader of men, and
another of his staff whose light burned brightly was Captain Thomas
Irving of Toronto. The exact opposite of Wright, they reminded me
always of the two great warriors in Sienkiewicz's "With Fire and
Sword." All the engineers were men of technical training and much
experience. They were right at home in Flanders, and deserved the
tributes that we heard tendered them by the British General Staff.
Their confidence in the practical experience of the Canadians was
demonstrated by their sending to us for a practical mining man to
direct the big mining operations south of Ypres.

One of the happiest features of billet life was the receiving and
writing of letters to friends at home. Pen and ink were plentiful, so
was paper, and most of the spare time of the men was spent in writing
letters to friends. All these letters had to be censored, and the
censor was not Lord Kitchener, as some people seem to think, nor Sir
John French, as the London papers would have it, but the colonel of
each regiment. He is the heartless man who has to wade through reams
of love letters, and he never even drops a tear when he finds one of
his young men corresponding with two or more young ladies at home, and
assuring each of them in the most fervent and fond language that he
loves but her and her alone. Sometimes the commanding officer is so
busy that the labor of censoring the letters is turned over to a
junior subaltern who may happen to be handy. The letters are brought
in to headquarters and left unsealed. They are supposed to be read by
the colonel, closed and his name written across the front page
vouching for the contents. On one occasion one of my platoon
commanders brought into the orderly room a very large bundle of
letters. His men had been very busy with their pens that morning, and
he made some remark to that effect to me. At the moment I was very
busy writing letters to irate mothers who would write to me wheneve