e day time.[1]

For example: one Sunday morning we travelled from Armentieres to
Ploegsteert by a road which in spots could be seen from the German
lines, though screened by green canvas at such places. Just before we
entered Ploegsteert village we were in full view of the enemy for a
short distance. Instead of passing right through the long village
street as I had intended we stopped for a minute to look at a well
which was being used as a source of drinking water. As we started
forward shells began to spray the road at the far end of the village
at the very moment when we ourselves would have arrived had we gone
right on. Naturally we changed our course and turned off at right
angles towards home, while heavy shelling of the town continued.

Half a mile out of the village we met a civilian with his wife and
little six year old girl, all dressed in their Sunday clothes, jogging
along in a two wheeled cart to their home in Ploegsteert village,
which was still being shelled. Why people should apparently discount
death as some of these civilians seemed to do, passed our powers of
comprehension; it never ceased to be an astonishing thing to me.

There was great air activity during that period on the part of the
Bosches and with a reason. We knew that they were ready for another
gas attack, for our artillery had burst a tank in the German trenches
and the yellow fumes of chlorine gas had been identified. A German gas
bag used for getting the wind drift was also brought in to us for
examination, showing that the enemy was awaiting a favorable
opportunity.

As I sat out in our garden in Bailleul one evening at the end of April
reading "The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne," three aeroplanes like great
birds volplaned slowly down from the clouds--coming home to
roost--until they were within 100 feet of the ground, just clearing
the house tops as they dropped into their nesting ground on the other
side of the town. I could see the pilots quite plainly.

In that brick-walled garden, full of rose bushes in leaf, I sat and
looked at the cherry trees in early blossom, and thoughts came to me
of other gardens away back in Canada, where I had spent many an hour
in the gloaming, while real birds and bats flitted about across the
sky. I leaned over to breathe the perfume of a white jonquil and a
thrill of emotion swept over me and almost made me dizzy--for the
odour was one I had not met with for a long, long time. This variety
of jonqui