ng in all about fifty shells within a radius of five hundred
yards. Then they took up another target and we had leisure to examine
the damage. Our shack had escaped except for a few broken tiles, the
next building south occupied by Captain McGregor had one room blown
up, that in which he had his cot. Fortunately he was out when the
German visitors arrived. The shell, a four inch high explosive, tore a
couple of sandbags out of the back window, and as it apparently had a
"delay action" fuse it burst fairly in the middle of the room. There
was nothing left of Captain McGregor's cot but a pile of woollen
shreds. His trunk and the clothing hanging on the wall were ripped to
pieces.

Captain Perry was having a bath in an old fashioned wash tub in the
next room when the explosion took place. Nothing happened to him as he
bore a charmed life.

Some of the shells that fell into the ditch were dug up by Sergeant
Lewis who was in charge of our pioneers. They were four inch high
explosives.

CHAPTER XVI

WITH GENERAL SIR DOUGLAS HAIG

When we left the trenches at Fromelles for the first time we took up
billets on the Rue Du Quesne. This street was named after a one-time
General and Governor of Canada during the French regime. His name is
still perpetuated in the great steel works at Pittsburg, U.S.A., along
with that of Lord Pitt and Braddock, for it was before Fort Du Quesne
that General Braddock fell in 1755. Braddock was one of those
unfortunate British Generals who were sent out to command colonials.
He would not take the advice of his colonial officers and paid the
penalty of his unpreparedness with his life. A comparison of Indian
warfare of one hundred and fifty years ago with the war of to-day will
convince anyone that the Red Indians on the warpath had nothing on the
Germans. They burned houses and killed innocent women and children.
For these atrocities they gained unenviable notoriety. The Germans do
the same things. Hardly a farm house where we were billeted that did
not have the graves of the peaceful occupants in the gardens close by.
Men, women and children were destroyed by shell and other implements
of war. At Armentieres we were shown Belgian children whose hands had
been hacked off, and at the farms we saw old men maimed and with
withered arms and legs still bearing the marks of the cords which
bound them to trees and posts.

"Frightfulness" was part of the German war religion. When their
artill