With Our Soldiers in France | Page 4

crash of the exploding shells of the enemy,
which toss the earth in dark waves into the air in the black surf of war.
Gun after gun now joins the great chorus, swelling and falling in a
hideous symphony of discordant sounds. The whole horizon is lit up
and aflame. The sky quivers and reflects the flash of the great guns, as
with the constant vibration of heat lightning. Flares and Verey lights of
greenish yellow and white turn the night into ghastly day, and like the
lurid flames of an inferno light up the battlefield, while the rifles
crackle in the glare. Here a parachute-light like a great star hangs

suspended almost motionless above us, lighting up the whole battlefield,
and now a burning farmhouse or exploding ammunition dump
illuminates the sky as from some vast subterranean furnace flung open
upon the heavens. All the long sullen night the earth is rocked by slow
intermittent rumbling, till with 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 before the battle we were digging under Hill Number
60. A chance shell exploded on the surface above us and buried us all
underground. Three of us were killed and the other two left alive. I had
one man across my chest and another across my legs, one dead and the
other wounded. We could not move hand or foot. We were buried in
there for seven hours and they finally dug us out unconscious.
"Then we started another sap to lay a mine. My pal was listening, with
an iron rod driven in the ground and two copper wires leading from it
to a head piece, such as a wireless operator uses, so that we could hear
the approach of the enemy's sappers, who were countermining against
us. My pal asked me to come and listen. But I had hardly got the
headpiece on when I said, 'O Lord, they're on us!' and before I could
get the thing off my ears the end of our sap fell through and the
Germans were at us. There was only room to