e to Sergeant
Venner of my signalling staff who had his telephone in a "dig in"
alongside of mine. He was half way through when a big "coal box" shell
exploded a few feet away emitting a terrible stench, a cross between
marsh gas and camphor balls.

The smell was overpowering. Venner dropped his pencil and clapped his
hands to his face saying, "Wait a minute, Colonel, the smell of that
shell makes my head ache." I looked at him and saw he had turned very
pale. Looking more closely I noticed blood trickling down the side of
his face between his fingers. I snatched his Glengarry off his head
and sure enough a jagged piece of shell had cut through the Glengarry
and ripped a gash in his scalp about two inches long.

I pulled the piece of steel out and said, "No wonder the shell makes
your head ache! You are wounded."

In a trice I had my scissors out, and cutting the hair away from the
wound I put some iodine into the cut, Corporal Pyke, his assistant,
helped to bind Sergeant Venner's wound with his first aid bandage.
After he was fixed up he pulled out his book to finish the message,
but I ordered him to clear out and go back to the dressing station. To
my amazement he dissented.

"Not a bit of it, sir," he boldly replied, for the first time in his
life disobeying my orders.

"Go on, sir, please, and finish the message." "I am all right."

I was so surprised that I finished the message and he stoutly refused
to go to the hospital and worked on the signal wires till the
battalion was permanently relieved a week or so later. I recommended
him for a decoration, also a few other brave officers and men who did
not get them.

CHAPTER XXVII

TWELVE GLORIOUS DAYS

"They've got me in the back, Colonel! My poor wife and children!"

This was the startled exclamation of one of my men who occupied a
"digin" about ten feet from mine. He turned pale.

The Germans were shelling us with high explosive shells from the north
rim of the salient. Huge "coal boxes," coming from the direction of
Pilken, were falling in the village of Wiltje on our front. With a
twang like a giant steel bow a shrapnel shell had burst overhead. They
had commenced to spray us in the back with shrapnel from the direction
of Hill 60, and one of the bullets that pattered like hail on our clay
parapets had struck him.

I had ordered all the men to keep on their overcoats, as the stout
woollen cloth of the Canadian great coats will stop the Germa