Three Times and Out | Page 3

the others of us, on the last day of August.
I remember that trip through the mountains in that soft, hazy, beautiful
August weather; the mountain-tops, white with snow, were wrapped
about with purple mist which twisted and shifted as if never satisfied
with their draping. The sheer rocks in the mountain-sides, washed by a
recent rain, were streaked with dull reds and blues and yellows, like the
old-fashioned rag carpet. The rivers whose banks we followed ran blue
and green, and icy cold, darting sometimes so sharply under the track
that it jerked one's neck to follow them; and then the stately evergreens
marched 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 what was going on, and in order not to lose the
benefit of it, I cleaned out a place in a hedge, which was just in front of
the part of the trench I was in, and in this way I could see what was
happening, at least in my immediate vicinity.
We knew that the Algerians who were holding a trench to our left had
given way and stampeded, as a result of a German gas attack on the
night of April 22d. Not only had the front line broken, but, the panic
spreading, all of them ran, in many cases leaving their rifles behind
them. Three companies of our battalion had been hastily sent in to the
gap caused by the flight of the Algerians. Afterwards I heard that our
artillery had been hurriedly withdrawn so that it might not fall into the
hands of the enemy; but we did not know that at the time, though we
wondered, as the day went on, why we got no artillery support.
Before us, and about fifty yards away, were deserted farm buildings,
through whose windows I had instructions to send shots at intervals, to

discourage the enemy from putting in machine guns. To our right there
were other farm buildings where the Colonel and Adjutant were
stationed, and in the early morning I was sent there with a message
from Captain Scudamore, to see why our ammunition had not come up.
I found there