o the last man until help
came and the French line was reconstituted as it was when the French
Turcos broke before the deadly gas. Like typical Highlanders we were
the "Forlorn Hopes" of the Empire.

It was away after two o'clock in the morning when the shelling died
down a bit in our front. I threw myself down in the dugout and fell
asleep. I slept with revolver ready and boots on and got in a few
winks. I was awakened at about a quarter to four by loud talking and
the roar of guns. I jumped up and turned out to get a glimpse of what
was going on in the trenches in front. I met Capt. Dansereau, who told
me the Germans were again trying to gas the 48th. True enough, in the
grey dawn a heavy yellow pall hung over our trenches and there was a
sweet pungent smell of chlorine in the air. The two platoons that were
in dugouts were at once sent to their stations in the supporting
trenches. Major Marshall and Capt. Dansereau went into the trenches
with them, while Lieutenant Shoenberger and I remained at the dugout
trench at the telephone. There was a slight lull in the cannonading
for a few minutes, then the German guns began to speak in louder and
more insistent tones. I looked around the salient, shaped like a man's
right foot, of which we were the toe, and hundreds of batteries seemed
to be turned on our trenches, both front and supporting. Again and
again salvos of "coal boxes" fell in succession along the parapet.
Talk about Neuve Chapelle, we were getting our own back with
interest. All the German batteries were concentrated on our parapets
and the trenches held by our regiment. Pandemonium reigned along the
front line of trenches. The Germans followed up their gasses again
with intense rifle and machine gun fire. Up and down along the
parapets of the redoubts the shells kept dropping, throwing up huge
pyramids of black smoke fifty feet in the air. These blasts resembled
rows of black trees or fountains. How anything could live in that
seething vortex, created by the bursting high explosive shells, is a
mystery. Many a brave Highlander would see the lone shielings and the
misty mountains of Canada no more. All this time the Germans were
industriously shelling the dugouts and supporting trenches where our
supports were located and along the Gravenstafel Ridge. Huge shells
fell like hail. Those that failed to burst in the air exploded the
minute they struck the hard untilled clay of the fallow fields and
fragments flew i