e Canadians
came, the vicious bombardment described in the last letter descended on
the flank they both were holding. They were buried together by the heavy
shell-bursts. They dug each other out. When the garrison became so thin
that whole lengths of trench were without a single unwounded occupant,
they helped each others' wounded down to the next length, and built
another barricade, and held that.

Finally, when hour after hour passed and the incessant shelling never
ceased, the garrison was withdrawn a little farther; and then five of
them went back to the barricade which the enemy's artillery had
discovered. They sat down in the trench behind it. A German battery was
trying for it--putting its four big high-explosive shells regularly
round it--salvo after salvo as punctual as clockwork. It was only a
matter of time before the thing must go.

So the five sat there--Tasmanians and Canadians--and discussed the rival
methods of wheat growing in their respective dominions in order to keep
their thoughts away from that inevitable shell.

It came at last, through their shelter--slashed one man across the face,
killed two and left two--smashed the barricade into a scrap-heap. Then
others were brought to stand by. Shells were falling anything from
thirty to forty in the minute. One of the remaining Tasmanian
sergeants--a Lewis gunner--came back from an errand, crawling, wounded
dangerously through the neck. "I don't want to go away," he said. "If I
can't work a Lewis gun, I can sit by another chap and tell him how to."
In the end, when he was sent away, he was seen crawling on two knees and
one hand, guiding with the other hand a fellow gunner who had been hit.

That night a big gun, much bigger than the rest, sent its shells roaring
down through the sky somewhere near. The men would be waked by the
shriek of each shell and then fall asleep and be waked again by the
crash of the explosion. And still they held the trench. And still every
other message ended--"But we will hold on."

They had withdrawn a little to where they could hold during the night;
but before the grey morning, the moment the bombardment had eased, they
crept back again lest the Germans should get there first.

With the light came a reinforcement of new Canadians--grand fellows in
great spirit. And the last Australian was during that morning withdrawn.
It was the most welcome sight in all the world to see those troops come
in. Not that the tired men wo