the most easily detected objects by an
airplane, and although we had strict orders on no account to look up,
the temptation for some was too strong. Meantime, the minister continued
to read the service, but the responses were not as hearty as they had
been, and he himself was standing with shoulders hunched up to the back
of his neck, the book pulled up to his nose, and furtively trying to see
through his eyebrows the danger-birds in the blue. In the midst of the
solemn moment an officer, glimpsing some of the men turning their faces
skyward, bellowed, "Damn you, keep those mugs down."

It was our good fortune that none of the messages reached their intended
destination.

CHAPTER VII

SANCTUARY WOODS

(_3rd Battle of Ypres_)

The third battle of Ypres commenced June 2, lasting until June 15, 1916.
Sanctuary Woods was a cluster of trees, comprising about one thousand in
number, and they were the very finest and noblest specimens of their
various types,--oak, elm, ash and beech. They were located just one mile
outside the city in a northwesterly direction. One of our trenches ran
northeast and southwest through the middle of the woods.

The line had been exceptionally quiet for the space of a week. My
battery of six guns was located at a chateau known as the Belgian
Garden, about 600 yards in the rear of the wood. Two guns were ordered
into the wood as a sacrifice battery, and my usual luck attached me to
one of them. We were located in a dry ditch, 300 yards back from the
front line. Our orders, as usual in the case of the sacrifice battery,
were to wait until the Germans, when they broke through, if they did,
were almost in line with our guns.

The morning of the 2nd was a beautiful summer's day; nature was in
perfect repose; the birds sang gayly, the humming of bees and fragrance
of flowers filled the air. We were busily engaged making our morning
ablutions in some shell holes when, like a bolt from the blue, hell
broke loose in the form of the most violent bombardment I had
experienced up to that time, lasting twenty minutes, missiles of every
kind raining down on us on all sides. "Stand to!"--and we waited.

At the end of twenty minutes our men started jumping out of their
trenches ahead of us and charging across. They were met by the enemy in
mass formation and overwhelmed. They died to a man. The Germans pressed
the attack home and came on, yelling like fiends incarnate, drunk with
the joy of the