ung artillery officer of the 2nd Division, but, as all
his papers had been taken away, I could not discover his name. My way
passed through the remains of what had been an enemy camp. There were
a number of well-built huts there, containing much German war-material,
but they had been damaged by our shells. The Germans had (p. 293)
evidently been obliged to get out of the place as quickly as possible.
I was just leaving the camp when I met several of our men bringing up
a number of prisoners. While we were talking, some shells fell, and we
all had to dive into two trenches. The Huns took one; we Canadians
took the other. We had no desire, in case a shell landed in our midst
to have our bits mingled with those of the Germans. When the
"straffing" was over, the others went back, and I continued my way to
the front. It must have been about six or seven o'clock when I arrived
at the 5th Battalion Headquarters, which were in a deep German dugout.
The Colonel was absent at a conference, so the Adjutant was in
command. I told him that I had come provided with cigarettes and other
comforts for the men, and asked him to give me a runner to take me to
the front line. He absolutely refused to do anything of the kind, as
he told me he did not know where it was himself. The situation was
most obscure. Our men had attacked and had been driven back and then
they had attacked again, but he thought they were now in shell holes
and would be hard to find. In fact, he was most anxious about the
condition of affairs and was hoping the Colonel would soon return. I
asked him if he would like me to spend the night there. He said he
would, so I determined to settle down and wait for an opportunity of
getting up to the men.

I went over to a trench a little way off, passing two dead Germans as
I did so, and saw the little white flag with the red cross on it which
showed that a dugout there was used as the regimental aid post. I went
down into the place, which had two openings, and found the M.O. and
his staff and a number of machine-gunners. Being Sunday, I told them
that I would have service for them. We all sat on the floor of the
long dugout. Two or three candles gave us all the light we had, and
the cigarettes which I had brought with me were soon turned into
smoke. In the meantime a young stretcher-bearer, unknown to me, made a
cup of tea and brought that and some buttered toast for my supper.
When I had finished and we were just g