ne of us
held a rifle. The wounded who had to take their chance of living because
there was no way to convey them back to shelter--some of them would sit up,
if they possibly could, to load and load again rifles which they lifted
from dead comrades. They would hand us these as our rifles got too hot to
hold. And still the German attacks persisted. Still they came on. And still
we did not budge an inch from our position as it was when the gas first
came over. They did not gain a yard, though when the British reserves at
last reached us, there were only two thousand of us left standing on our
feet; two thousand of us who were whole from out the twelve thousand that
had started in to repel the attack.

The two thousand of us were still in the old position. Still we held in our
safe-keeping the key of the road to Calais, to Paris, to London and
farther. The key to world power which the Hohenzollern coveted.

Behind Ypres to-day there lie four thousand five hundred of the flower of
the Canadian contingent. Four thousand five hundred young men who made the
extreme sacrifice for King, for Flag, for Country, for Right. They lie in
their narrow beds of earth, and over them wave the shading leaves of maple
trees. For thoughtful citizens sent over and had planted "Canada's little
maple grove"--a monument in a strange country to the men who fought and
died and were not defeated.

On the night of April twenty-second, General Alderson and his officers saw
that the situation was desperate. They thought to save their men. The
general sent up the command: "Retire!"

The word first reached the Little Black Devils. The men heard it, the
officers heard it, and they looked over the flattened parapet of their
trench. They saw the oncoming hordes of brutes in a hellish-looking garb,
and they sent back the answer: "Retire be damned!"

The general, the officers, rested content. With a spirit such as these men
showed even against desperate odds, nothing but victory could result.

The gas and the attacking waves of men poured on. We were not frightened.
No; none of us showed fear. Warfare such as this does not scare men with
red blood in their veins. The Germans judge others by themselves. A German
can be scared, a German can be bluffed. They thought that we were of the
same mettle, or lesser. At the Somme we put over on the enemy the only new
thing that we have been able to spring during the whole three years--the
tanks. Were they scared? T