was
to return with a bearer party. The other one and I watched by Duffy.
It was an awful and wonderful time. Our field batteries never slackened
their fire and the wood echoed back the crackling sound of the guns.
The flare lights all round gave a lurid background to the scene. At
the foot of the long slope, down which the brave lads had gone to the
attack, I saw the black outline of the trees. Over all fell the soft
light of the moon. A great storm of emotion swept through me and I
prayed for our men in their awful charge, for I knew that the Angel of
Death was passing down our lines that night. When the bearer party
arrived, we lifted Duffy on to the stretcher, and the men handed me
their rifles and we moved off. I hung the rifles on my shoulder, and I
thought if one of them goes off and blows my brains out, there will be
a little paragraph in the Canadian papers, "Canon Scott accidentally
killed by the discharge of a rifle," and my friends will say, "What a
fool he was to fuss about rifles, why didn't he stick to his own job?"
However, they were Ross rifles and had probably jammed. There were
many wounded being carried or making their way towards Wieltje. The
road was under shell fire all the way. When we got to the dressing
station which was a small red-brick estaminet, we were confronted by a
horrible sight. On the pavement before it were rows and rows of (p. 063)
stretcher cases, and inside the place, which was dimly lighted by
candles and lamps, I found the doctor and his staff working away like
Trojans. The operating room was a veritable shambles. The doctor had
his shirt sleeves rolled up and his hands and arms were covered with
blood.

The wounded were brought in from outside and laid on the table, where
the doctor attended to them. Some ghastly sights were disclosed when
the stretcher-bearers ripped off the blood-stained clothes and laid
bare the hideous wounds. At the end of the room, an old woman, with a
face like the witch of Endor, apparently quite unmoved by anything
that was happening, was grinding coffee in a mill and making a black
concoction which she sold to the men. It was no doubt a good thing for
them to get a little stimulant. In another room the floor was covered
with wounded waiting to be evacuated. There were many Turcos present.
Some of them were suffering terribly from the effects of the gas.
Fresh cases were being brought down the road every moment, and laid
out on the cold pavement t