d always with us, like endless
companies of soldiers or pilgrims wending their way to a favorite
shrine.

When we awakened the second morning, and found ourselves on the wide
prairie of Alberta, with its many harvest scenes and herds of cattle,
and the gardens all in bloom, one of the boys said, waving his hand
at a particularly handsome house set in a field of ripe wheat, "No
wonder the Germans want it!"

* * *

My story really begins April 24, 1915. Up to that time it had been
the usual one--the training in England, with all the excitement of
week-end leave; the great kindness of English families whose friends
in Canada had written to them about us, and who had forthwith sent
us their invitations to visit them, which we did with the greatest
pleasure, enjoying every minute spent in their beautiful houses; and
then the greatest thrill of all--when we were ordered to France.

The 24th of April was a beautiful spring day of quivering sunshine,
which made the soggy ground in the part of Belgium where I was fairly
steam. The grass was green as plush, and along the front of the
trenches, where it had not been trodden down, there were yellow
buttercups and other little spring flowers whose names I did not
know.

We had dug the trenches the day before, and the ground was so marshy
and wet that water began to ooze in before we had dug more than three
feet. Then we had gone on the other side and thrown up more dirt,
to make a better parapet, and had carried sand-bags from an old
artillery dug-out. Four strands of barbed wire were also put up
in front of our trenches, as a sort of suggestion of barbed-wire
entanglements, but we knew we had very little protection.

Early in the morning of the 24th, a German aeroplane flew low over
our trench, so low that I could see the man quite plainly, and could
easily have shot him, but we had orders not to fire--the object of
these orders being that we must not give away our position.

The airman saw us, of course, for he looked right down at us, and
dropped down white pencils of smoke to show the gunners where we
were. That big gray beetle sailing serenely over us, boring us with
his sharp eyes, and spying out our pitiful attempts at protection, is
one of the most unpleasant feelings I have ever had. It gives me the
shivers yet! And to think we had orders not to fire!

Being a sniper, I had a rifle fixed up with a telescopic sight, which
gave me a fine view of