that is all.

The P.P.s shot at Germans. After a night without sleep, after a day
among their dead and wounded, after torrents of shell-fire, after
breathing smoke, dust and gas, these veterans were in a state of
exaltation entirely oblivious of danger, of their surroundings, mindless
of what came next, automatically shooting to kill as they were trained
to do, even as a man pulls with all his might in the crucial test of a tug
of war. Old Corporal Christy, bear-hunter of the North-West, who
could "shoot the eye off an ant," as Niven said, leaned out over the
parapet, or what was left of it, because he could take better aim lying
down and the Germans were so thick that he could not afford any
misses.

Corporal Dover had to give up firing his machine-gun at last.
Wounded, he had dug it out of the earth after an explosion and set it
up again. The explosion which destroyed the gun finally crushed his
leg and arm. He crawled out of the debris toward the support trench
which had become the fire trench, only to be killed by a bullet.

The Germans got possession of a section of the P.P.s' trench where,
it is believed, no Canadians were left. But the German effort died
there. It could get no farther. This was as near to Ypres as the
Germans were to go in this direction. When the day's work was done,
there, in sight of the field scattered with German dead, the P.P.s
counted their numbers. Of the six hundred and thirty-five men who
had begun the fight at daybreak, one hundred and fifty men and four
officers, Niven, Pappineau, Clark and Vandenberg, remained fit for
duty.

Vandenberg is a Hollander, but mostly he is Vandenberg. To him the
call of youth is the call to arms. He knows the roads of Europe and
the roads of Chihuahua. He was at home fighting with Villa at
Zacetecas and at home fighting with the P.P.s in front of Ypres.

Darkness found all the survivors among the P.P.s in the support and
communication trenches. The fire trench had become an untenable
dust-heap. They crept out only to bring in any wounded unable to
help themselves; and wounded and rescuers were more than once
hit in the process. It was too dangerous to attempt to bury the dead
who were in the fire-trench. Most of them had already been buried by
shells. For them and for the dead in the support trenches interred by
their living comrades, Niven recited such portions as he could recall
of the Church of England service for the dead--recited them with a
t