u?" He was very sarcastic.

"No, we didn't, sir."

"Well, you thought it was going to be a walk through to Berlin, didn't
you?"

"Why, no. We thought it was the other way about, sir," I ventured.

He shifted: "Well, what do you think of us anyhow?"

"Your artillery was all right but your infantry was no good." I began
to feel shaky again. However, he took that calmly enough.

"Oh! So our infantry was no good."

"We could have held them all right, sir."

He ruminated on that a moment, rumbled in his throat and abruptly
changed the subject, in an unpleasant fashion, however.

"You're the fellows we want to get hold of. You cut the throats of our
wounded."

I denied it and we argued back and forth over that for several
minutes, and very heatedly. He referred to St. Julien and said that
this thing had occurred there. I said and quite truthfully that we had
not been at St. Julien, that we were in the Imperial and not the
Canadian Army and had been spectators in near-by trenches of the St.
Julien affair. I even went into some detail to explain that we were a
special corps of old soldiers who, not being able to rejoin their old
regiments, had at the outbreak of war formed one of their own and had
been accepted as such and sent to France months ahead of the Canadian
contingent. I added that I myself had just rejoined the regiment,
having got my "Blighty" in March at St. Eloi and as proof of my other
statements I further volunteered that I was one of the 2nd Gordons and
after the South African War had gone to Canada where I had finished my
reserve several years since.

He listened but was plainly unconvinced. Another officer broke in: "I
can explain it, sir. These men were in the 80th Brigade and the 27th
Division. Colonel Farquhar was their Commanding Officer and Captain
Buller took command when Colonel Farquhar was killed." We stared at
one another in amazement, for it was all quite true.

This finished that examination. We did not tell them that Colonel
Buller had been blinded a few days before and had been succeeded by
that Major Hamilton Gault who had been so largely instrumental in
raising us.

None of our wounds had received the slightest attention. Cox in
particular suffered cruelly but refused to whimper. Royston's head was
swollen to the size of a water bucket and he was in great pain. We
left them here and never saw them again. Cox died two weeks later of a
blood poisoning which was the combined resul