a night. And regularly twice a week three shells were dropped
along Delta Road, a communication trench forming the third side of the
little salient.

The effect of the "minenwerfer" was very local, however, owing to the
thinness of the shell wall, but such men as it killed were not a pretty
sight. Fortunately, too, the shells could be seen both by day and night,
and rose to such a height before dropping that men could scamper for
shelter from the threatened spot. But no dug-out could withstand its
explosion, and a series of craters, eight or ten feet in depth and
twelve feet in diameter, marked the "minenwerfer's" work.

Every battery that covered our area had, by the time winter was over,
reported they had silenced "Minnie," but when we left that area months
later she was still doing business at the old stand.

To relieve the monotony of this sort of thing the Canadian Corps
organised a series of night raids on the German trenches.

The first, and most brilliant, of these was conducted by the 5th and 7th
Battalions of the 2nd Brigade on a barricade or forward trench that had
been constructed by the enemy near our old position opposite the Petite
Douve Farm.

This raid was made on a villainous night blacker than Egypt during the
plagues and raining as only Flanders can.

With faces blackened with charcoal, the raiding parties crept out to the
enemy wire and cut it strand by strand, a process lasting several hours.
During this time the cooks of one of the battalions carried out
pannikins of hot tea to the men who were lying in the mud hacking at the
wire.

Finally the path was reported clear except at one point where a deep
ditch full of water could not be crossed, and at the appointed moment
the raiding parties swooped in on the enemy trench.

Secure, as they thought, on such a vile night, the enemy were
completely surprised, but put up a stubborn resistance. An officer and
about thirty men were secured as prisoners, and where resistance was
more determined the enemy was driven from his trench with bombs. Then on
a given signal the raiders returned to their own trenches, bringing
helmets, saw-tooth bayonets, and Mauser rifles as souvenirs of their
midnight call.

By this time the alarm had spread through the German lines, and his
artillery, in response to red signals shot up by men very lately
deceased, began to pound their own trench, thus catching their own
bombing parties, who, now the trench was only occu