the silent dawn the birds wake
and the war-giants sink for a few hours in troubled sleep. Then the
new day breaks and the war-planes climb in the clear morning air to
begin the battle afresh.

But let us turn from the hard-won ground of Messines to some of the men
who fought over it and survived. Here is a young American, Fred R----,
a graduate of Johns Hopkins, who fought in this battle with the
Canadians, and who told us in his own words the story of those brief
hours.

"Our opening barrage lasted about twenty minutes, but in that short
time some two million shells were dropped on the enemy from about nine
thousand of our guns. We could hear no distinct reports, just one
steady roar of continuous explosion. The ground shook beneath us and
fragments from the trenches and dugouts caved in about us from the
shock. The air was oppressive and you felt difficulty in breathing, as
if you were in a vacuum.

"About three o'clock in the morning the order came to 'Stand to!' and
shortly after the word rang out 'Up and over! Over the top boys, and
the best of luck!' With one foot on the fire step we climbed out of
the deep trench and with our rifles we started forward at a walk,
behind our advancing barrage. I was tense now and all of a tremble.
At a time like this every man is driven to his deepest thoughts. It is
not fear exactly, but apprehension and dread of the unknown.

"As we started forward, one young boy fell at my side. I heard him
call, 'O, Mother!' as he fell. Another cried, 'O, God!' and sank down
on the other side. Then my partner, a boy of eighteen, fell, both legs
blown away above the knee. I bound up his wounds and carried him on my
back to the nearest dressing station. 'Fred,' he said, 'would you mind
kissing me just once? So long!' and with that he was gone. Then I got
mad and began to see red. In the first trench I ran amuck and with
rifle, bayonet, and bombs I suppose I accounted for twenty men in the
hour that followed.

"I've been gassed three times, twice with the old gas and once with the
new, and I've had my share. Would I like to go home now? Say, I'd
rather be a lamp-post at the foot of Michigan Boulevard in Chicago than
the whole electric light system in all the rest of the universe!"

We turned from this young American to Sapper W---- of Western Canada,
who had just been through the same battle underground, and asked him to
tell us his own story.

"Well, sir, long b