As he was stringing the wires to the trench he had to
duck several times. "Here is where I shine by being a 'sawed-off,'" he
informed me. We were soon in touch with commandant headquarters, and
from Major Marshall I learned that our forward trenches were still
untouched. As the night closed in the Germans redoubled their shelling
of St. Julien. The charred church spire was lit up with the high
explosive shells, and several fires broke out in the village and made
the night hideous. Shrapnel broke constantly overhead spraying our
trenches and several men were wounded. Several poor wounded Turcos had
taken refuge in our trench. One of them, an under officer, informed
Lieutenant Dansereau that the Turcos would stick with the British till
the last. He added as an aside that he wished Algiers was as
prosperous as Egypt. So much for this son of the desert who in this
terrible hour envied the Fellah of Egypt who was permitted to follow
his ordinary avocation as farmer, in the midst of all these warlike
times, undisturbed by conscription or his British rulers.

As dawn came the German fire increased and my adjutant pulled a note
book out of his pocket and began writing in it with a big blue
pencil. I asked him if he was going to try and send a message through
to headquarters. "No, sir," he said. "I am afraid I will not come out
of this alive, so I am writing a message to my friends, I have
reconciled myself to death."

I told him I felt sure that we were going to come out all right, that
I had a "hunch" that we were, and that some time we would read that
memo together under happier circumstances, and it would bring back
memories of the Valley of the Shadow of Death through which we were
passing together.

He shook his head doubtfully, and when I laughingly showed him a
German horseshoe which I had picked up on the field when we first saw
the gas and which I still carried in my overcoat pocket, he smiled but
was not reassured.

However, the fact that he felt that we were both going to be wiped out
did not dampen his courage. Strange to say my prophecy about his last
message came true, for we read it together and laughed over it in
Montreal, Canada, months later as I had predicted.

Before dawn several of my runners or signallers returned from brigade
headquarters with the story of the fight around the farm house where
General Turner, V.C., and Major Wright of the engineers had rallied
the cooks and orderlies to the defence