nced, just the same as he did at St. Eloi. We realized
that our time on rest was likely to be cut short; so we got busy and
spent all our money--and sure enough, next day the order came for us to
move, and away we went along the road to V---- just behind Ypres. We
reached there safely and some of our officers and N. C. O.'s went on up
to the lines to see what kind of a place we were going into. They
found that we would be on the left flank of the attack, and although
the Germans had blown most of the front line to pieces, they had not
attempted to advance here. That night two companies, A and B, were
sent on ahead of the rest of us, and they went as near the lines as
they could in motor-buses, then they took over what was left of the
front lines, consisting mostly of shell holes. The rest of us were
marched through Ypres, and we found it a mass of ruins. It was here
that we saw the affects of war--dirty, horrible, stinking war.
Hundreds of people were buried when Ypres was bombarded, and the stench
of the place was unbearable. We followed the railroad for a piece and
we passed some shell holes made by the "Fat Berthas" used by the
Germans at the beginning of the war. You could bury an ordinary-sized
house in any one of these holes. Dead horses were lying everywhere,
showing that the road we were on had been shelled earlier in the
evening. We didn't know what minute they would open up again, so we
hurried over every crossroad. Fritzie had a mania for shelling
crossing roads, and those in the Ypres salient are all named
appropriately. Here are a few: "Shrapnel Corner," "Hellfire Corner,"
"Hell Blast Corner." We were marching in single file by this time, and
every man carried a sandbag, bomb, rifle and bayonet, rations and a
bottle of water. Some load, eh? Judging from the flares going up all
around us, we seemed to be going into a pocket. On our right, the
machine guns were going all the time, and they sounded like a thousand
riveting machines, only instead of construction their noise meant
destruction. Pretty soon we came to a big barrier of sandbags known as
"China Wall," and here dead men were lying everywhere, and we couldn't
help stumbling over them on our way in. At last we came to the
communicating trench, and just as we reached it Fritzie sent a salvo of
shells across--one or two of the boys caught it--the rest of us kept on
our way. We followed the trench, scrambling over parts that were blown
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