s, while observing our
fire, noticed a chap wandering around No Man's Land, and he would have
fired at him only the man turned round and the observer saw his black
face and knew right away that it was the missing man. A couple of boys
crawled out and brought him in. He was quite delirious. It seemed that
he had been wounded and bled quite a lot and became unconscious. The
sun dried the wound, but left him insane and he had started wandering
around No Man's Land.

Just before we left the St. Eloi front we had some of the Fourth
Division in with us, and we showed them what they had to do and left
them to play their part and show the Huns that they were
Canadians--and this they have undoubtedly done.

The Somme fighting was on about this time. I well remember the 1st of
July. Our aeroplanes went over the German lines and brought down about
six or seven of their observation balloons before you could say "Jack
Robinson." It was pretty slick work, with some new explosive that our
fellows had kept very secret.

In leaving the St. Eloi front we marched for three days to a little
town quite close to St. Omer called ----, where we drilled from five
in the morning till seven or eight at night, doing the usual training
so as to get us fit for the fray. By this time I was a full fledged
Lance Corporal in charge of "C" Company's Lewis guns. We had a great
time here. A couple of days in the week we would have sports and then
we would play games of baseball. Some of the boys would help the
French girls make up their crops. Another thing that helped to make us
so comfortable here was the difference in the people. They were most
hospitable and could not do enough for us. We would scatter our straw
on the floor, spread our blanket and go to sleep as happy and
contented as possible. I tell you when you have a tiled floor for a
mattress, your pack for a pillow and your overcoat for a blanket you
can appreciate such a comfort as straw and blankets.

We all knew that we were going to the Somme to take part in that big
show and we were very anxious to get down upon them. The First
Division had gone down a little ahead of us, but we were going to show
them that the 25th could play its part as well as any of the
Battalions and we did so.

We stayed a while here in training and then we started on our journey.
We would march about fifteen miles each day and would camp or bivouac
for the night. Before turning in to sleep we would have a s