to the damp, misty, soaking
chill of this non-zero country. Possibly, at night, the thermometer would
register some two or three degrees below freezing. A thin shell of ice
would form on the ditch which we called a trench. This would crackle round
our legs and the cold would eat into the very bone. At dawn the ice would
begin to break up and a steady sleet begin to fall. Later the sleet would
turn to rain, and so the day would pass till we were soaked through to the
skin. At night the frost would come again and stiffen our clothes to our
tortured bodies, next day another thaw and rain, and so to the end of our
turn, or to the time when an enemy bullet would finish our physical
suffering.

We could have borne all this without a murmur, and did bear it in a silence
that was grim, but we had a greater strain, a mental one, with which to
contend. We knew--we knew without a doubt that we were out there alone. We
had not a reserve behind us. We had not a tithe of the gun power which we
should have had. Our artillery was not appreciable in quantity. What there
was of it was effective, but as compared to the enemy gun power we were
nowhere. They had possibly ten to our one. They were very considerably
stronger than they are to-day. We, to-day, can say with truth that we are
where they were in 1914-15. We, with our two years of hurried and almost
frenzied work, and they, with their forty years of crafty preparation!

And they knew how to use those guns, too. Our engineering and pioneer
corps at that time were non-existent. We had practically none. The Germans
would put over a few shells during the day. They would level our sandbag
breastworks and blow our frail shelters to smithereens. We had no dugouts
and no communication trenches. With a shell of tremendous power they would
rip up yards of our makeshift defenses and kill half a dozen of our boys.
Sometimes we would groan aloud and pray to see a few German legs and arms
fly to the four winds as compensation. But no. We would wire back to
artillery headquarters: "For God's sake, send over a few shells, even one
shell, to silence this hell!" And day after day the same answer would come
back: "Heaven knows we are sorry, but you've had your allotment of shells
for to-day."

Perhaps one shell, or it may have been three, would have been the
ammunition ration of our particular front for the day.

It was nobody's fault at the moment of fighting. It lay perhaps between
those who had