h division.
Much the same sort of experiences as have been related elsewhere were
encountered and we had entered upon the fed-up stage of life at the
front. It needed something of extraordinary interest to rouse one's
interest to any unusual degree.

At the beginning of September the three Canadian Divisions were en
route to the Somme, while the newly arrived 4th Canadian Division came
up to take over part of the line near the Ypres Salient.

The British and French were doing well and taking many prisoners on
the Somme, as were the Russians on their front while the Roumanians
began their offensive and swept far over the country much to the
horror of the critics and everybody else.

There was great elation on the day of the big offensive on the Somme
when the British first used "tanks." I shall never forget the thrill I
had when we read a telegram received at one of the headquarters
repeating a wireless message from an aeroplane observer to the effect
that he could see a tank wobbling into a village followed by cheering
troops. It was the first time that engines of warfare had led the way
to an attacking force and the picture of the enemy fleeing before
these new engines of terror spouting fire and destruction and rolling
over trenches and machine gun emplacements, while cheering Tommies
followed in their wake, will never be forgotten. We envied the air men
their view that day and thought of how they must have thrilled at the
sights below them.

We had been ordered to get out of our quarters in the school on
October the first. After some difficulty we decided to build a hut for
laboratory quarters and selected a field near the British isolation
hospital. The view from the site selected, overlooking the rolling
fields, with the Mt. de Cats surmounted by its monastery to the left,
and Mt. Rouge to the right, is about as fine as anything I have seen
in Belgium.

With the aid of a carpenter from the Canadian casualty clearing
station, we built the hut, 40 feet by 20 feet, ourselves, and when I
left for England early in October, it was a great satisfaction to feel
that we were established in what a Surgeon-General subsequently stated
to be "an ideal field laboratory."

On the way from what proved to be my last stay in France, we visited
the Somme area and saw some of our old comrades. The Canadians had on
the previous day suffered heavy casualties in trying to take Regina
trench and we passed homeward through the tent