mpt on our part to renew the offensive after the
stagnation of a winter of trench warfare. For years we had been taught
that an army that relinquishes the offensive acknowledges itself as
beaten. It now began to look as though military science had undergone a
complete revolution and that trench warfare and the policy of attrition
were to be the normal methods of the future.

But Neuve Chapelle showed something else--it showed that the indomitable
spirit of our men had not been quenched by the misery and suffering of
the winter months and that the British bayonet was as much to be feared
as ever.

"We were kept pretty busy," wrote a friend, "doing rapid fire, and lost
quite a few from shell fire. But our artillery had the time of their
lives, and fired pretty steadily the whole three days of the show."

Later he wrote that they were moving northward--probably to Hill 60--and
we could expect there would be something doing shortly.

It was not to Hill 60 that the Canadian Division went, but further
northward in the Ypres salient to the left of the 27th Division, where
the "Princess Pats" were winning immortality at St. Eloi.

So the days wore on, the surplus officers chafing at the monotony of
drill on a barrack square, relieved as it was by "Thes Dansants" at the
Metropole and promenades along the Leas at Folkestone.

Then one day a medical officer dropped a sure tip. He had been warned to
prepare beds for a thousand casualties--the Canadians were in something
big at last!

Just how big it was we realised a week later when the newspapers broke
forth into flamboyant headlines, "CANADIANS SAVED SITUATION," "FOUR GUNS
RECAPTURED," and other startling sentences that danced before the eyes.

Lyte and the writer were returning from some light festivities, when
the hoarse cry "All about the Canadians" arrested their attention.
Papers were hurriedly bought, and the brief vague lines of the official
_communique_ eagerly scanned. "By Jove!" was Lyte's exclamation; "but
isn't that great!" The writer, however, hardly heard him; he was
thinking of the many good friends who had taken part and the price they
had to pay, and his answer was the monosyllabic "Huh!" of the aborigine.

That evening we packed our kits.

CHAPTER VIII

YPRES, 1915

The Second Battle for Ypres, as the fighting at Langemarck and St.
Julien is officially designated, was largely a regimental and company
officers' battle. This does not, however