at each salvo, which consisted
usually of four huge shells.

A message from Major Osborne stated that there was a possibility of a
shortage of ammunition and he asked for orders and supports. I was
sorry to have to tell him that the 48th were to "hold on to the last,
and if ammunition gave out to use the bayonet, to hold the redoubts to
the end. If the Germans broke through to drive them out with the
bayonet."

Orders were issued that the wounded were to get first aid, but were
not to be carried out. We needed every rifle and man, and could no
longer spare stretcher bearers.

Help was expected, but it was just as dangerous to retire as to hold
the forts. We were holding the enemy back and any minute the British
might come.

I do not know whether my message got through to him, but I do know
that he and his fellow officers carried out the orders.

The Automatic Colt 45, which all the Canadian officers carried, is a
good weapon at close quarters. Its bullet would stop an ox, but there
is a limit to the rounds that can be fired. In a hard close scuffle,
there is nothing like a stout rifle and a long sharp bayonet. I picked
one up that had been dropped by a wounded man. It was an excellent
weapon, better at close quarters than my claymore. The knowledge
learned in the old Toronto Fencing Club of how to lunge and parry was
to stand me in good stead during that awful morning. The _arme
blanche_ is not to be despised, and when you are at it hand to hand
you are relieved from shell fire.

I afterwards gave the rifle to Sergeant Coe, the bravest of many
brave men, who carried it when he fell at the head of his platoon in
the immortal charge on the orchard at Festubert.

About nine o 'clock the German aeroplanes again came along and took
another good look at our position. A white flare was dropped over the
bit of trench held by Major Marshall, a platoon of forty odd men with
a machine gun and crew, that had again and again raked the German
trenches. About twenty howitzers immediately opened fire on that
unfortunate trench, and how any of them escaped was a mystery, for
they seemed to get the range to a dot. Company Sergeant-Major Vernon,
one of my best non-commissioned officers, had his head completely
blown off with a piece of shell. Sergeant Angus Ferguson, veteran of
India, Egypt and Africa, was shot in the arm and leg. He was left for
dead. Later the diabolical Huns captured him, and on his raising an
objection to ha