The next day the Battalion was relieved, and by small stages the remnants
of the companies made their way to Buire-sur-Ancre. This was the
Battalion's last time in action on the Somme, and it presented a very
changed aspect to its first arrival on this battlefield. Companies were
reduced to the size of platoons, and platoons to sections or less. During
the battle about 650 casualties had been sustained, including fifteen
officers dead. This was a large incision into the fighting strength, and
it was a long time before these losses were made up.

For the Battalion the Somme Battle with its terrible holocausts, incessant
shell fire and continuous slaughter, was at an end, but there was no
respite for the weary soldier. There was to be no rest or period for
recuperation. The Regiment was ordered to Ypres immediately. Tired and
exhausted, the men were taken out of the Somme inferno, having lost many
of their comrades, and with weary bodies and heavy hearts they faced the
prospect of the untold terrors of the fatal city of Ypres.

The journey to Ypres was long. First the Battalion entrained at Mericourt
in the afternoon of Sunday the 1st October. At midnight the men detrained
at Longpre and marched to Cocquerel, arriving at 3 a.m. the next day. The
men then bivouacked until reveille at 6-30 a.m. At 8-30 a.m. the Regiment
was again on the march to Pont Remy, where it entrained for Esquelbecq,
where it arrived at 9-30 p.m., and marched to billets at Wormhoudt. Two
days were spent here, and this afforded the men the rest they so badly
needed. The state of the Battalion can be gauged from the fact that at
Wormhoudt only one company commander had a subaltern.

YPRES.

On the 4th October the Battalion entrained on a light railway, and soon
reached Poperinghe, where it remained until darkness and then entrained on
a broad gauge train at Poperinghe Station for Ypres. It was a new
experience for the men to be in a train and yet within range of the
enemy's artillery. The personnel detrained just by the railway station at
Ypres and went into billets close by. Little could be seen of the city in
the dark. Stillness pervaded the area that night, and after the Somme
Battle the quietness was uncanny.

The next day the men had an opportunity of seeing the city that had
suffered so much in the war. It must have been subjected to many a tornado
of shells, for there was not a single house untouched and very few had
roofs. A few shells f