blessing, banner-baptizing humbugs. God! They make me tired!"

Strange words to hear in a cavalry mess! Strange turmoil in the souls
of men! They were the same words I had heard from London boys in Ypres,
spoken just as crudely. But many young gentlemen who spoke those words
have already forgotten them or would deny them.

XIX

The winter of 1915-16 passed with its misery, and spring came again to
France and Flanders with its promise of life, fulfilled in the beauty of
wild flowers and the green of leaves where the earth was not made barren
by the fire of war and all trees killed.

For men there was no promise of life, but only new preparations for
death, and continued killing.

The battle of Verdun was still going on, and France had saved herself
from a mortal blow at the heart by a desperate, heroic resistance which
cost her five hundred and fifty thousand in dead and wounded. On the
British front there were still no great battles, but those trench raids,
artillery duels, mine fighting, and small massacres which filled the
casualty clearing stations with the average amount of human wreckage.
The British armies were being held in leash for a great offensive in the
summer. New divisions were learning the lessons of the old divisions,
and here and there generals were doing a little fancy work to keep
things merry and bright.

So it was when some mines were exploded under the German earthworks on
the lower slopes of the Vimy Ridge, where the enemy had already blown
several mines and taken possession of their craters. It was to gain
those craters, and new ones to be made by our mine charges, that the
74th Brigade of the 25th Division, a body of Lancashire men, the 9th
Loyal North Lancashires and the 11th Royal Fusiliers, with a company of
Royal Engineers and some Welsh pioneers, were detailed for the perilous
adventure of driving in the mine shafts, putting tremendous charges of
high explosives in the sapheads, and rushing the German positions.

It was on the evening of May 15th, after two days of wet and cloudy
weather preventing the enemy's observation, that our heavy artillery
fired a short number of rounds to send the Germans into their dugouts. A
few minutes later the right group of mines exploded with a terrific roar
and blew in two of the five old German craters. After the long rumble
of heaving earth had been stilled there was just time enough to hear
the staccato of a German machine-gun. Then there