a companion, George Paudash, a Chippeway Indian and
corporal of our section. We had several Indians, there being two pairs
of brothers, all from the same reservation and all of them splendid
soldiers.

We had several men hit that night by rifle grenades. I particularly
remember two: Flanagan and McFarland. The former was hit in numerous
places, some of them really serious, but was most concerned over a
little scratch on his face which he was afraid would injure his
good-looks. McFarland, just a boy, about eighteen, had his left hand
terribly mangled and nearly twenty pieces of metal in other parts of
his body, but he laughed and called out: "I've got my Blighty; I've
got my Blighty." His brother had been shot through both eyes and
totally blinded a short time before. By the merest chance I saw
McFarland a few days later, as he was being taken aboard a hospital
ship at Boulogne and he then gave me his wrist watch, which had been
shattered and driven into the flesh, asking that I send it to his
father in Canada: I sent it by registered post, from London, but never
heard from it.

The artillery fighting continued for several days and on the night of
the eighteenth we were relieved and moved back to Bedford House, in
reserve.

Next morning I was summoned to Battalion Headquarters and informed
that I had been commissioned and was ordered back to England to act as
an instructor in one of the training divisions. Our Colonel at this
time also received his promotion to Brigadier-General and he promised,
as soon as he was assigned to a brigade, that he would request I be
transferred to his command as brigade machine gun officer. He did,
afterward, make an effort to have this done, but it was too late. I
had finally got my "long Blighty," and was out.

It was hard to part from that old crowd. I did not know when I would
get back, but we all knew, without question, that there would be other
faces gone from the ranks before we met again. When I did return,
during the Somme campaign, I was attached to another battalion and did
not often see the Twenty-first and when I did, I recognized but few of
them. They had taken part in the great advance of September
fifteenth, which captured Courcellette and numerous other towns--the
greatest gain ever made in one day on the Western Front until the
recent one at Cambrai--and had helped to add another glorious page to
Canada's brilliant record. But the cost was great. Many, oh, so many
of