The earth under our feet
trembled in convulsive shudders from a cannonade so vast that no one
sound could be picked out of it and the walls of dug-outs slid in,
burying sleeping men. But like the promise of God there came to us in
every interval of quietness, as always, the full-throated song of many
birds.

Our forces consisted of the French who held the left corner of the
Ypres salient, then the Canadian division in the centre, next the 28th
Division of the regular British Army and then our own, the 27th, with
Hill 60 on our right flank. The enemy attacked both at Hill 60 and at
the line of the Canadian Division and the French, and we held on to
the horse-shoe shaped line until the last possible moment when one
more shake of the tree would have thrown us like ripe fruit into the
German lap.

So near had the converging German forces approached to one another
that the weakened battery behind our own trenches had been at the
last, turned around the other way and fired in the opposite direction
without a shift in its own position. For our own protection we had
nothing. And later still these and all other guns left us to seek new
positions in the rear so that only we of the infantry remained.

Daily there had come orders to "Stand-to" in full marching order, to
evacuate; at which all ranks expostulated angrily. And then perhaps
another order--to stick it another day; at which we cheered and
slapped one another boisterously on the back so that the stolid
Germans over yonder must have wondered, knowing what they did of our
desperate situation.

But the dreaded order came at last and was confirmed, so that under
protest and like the beaten men that we knew we were not, we slunk
away under cover of darkness on the night of the third of May to
trenches three miles in the rear, and with us went the troops on ten
more miles of British front.

The movement as executed was in reality a feat of no mean importance
on the part of the higher command. Faced by an overwhelmingly superior
force, our badly depleted three divisions had barely escaped being
bagged in the net of which the enemy had all but drawn the noose in a
strategetic surrounding movement.

In detail, the movement had consisted of withdrawing under cover of
darkness with all that we could carry of our trench material, both to
prevent it falling into hostile hands and equally to strengthen our
new position. A small rearguard of fifteen men to the regiment had
held