. And, more important still, he
gave us all a cigarette, while he had a sergeant give us coffee.

That, the cigarette, was I think much the best of anything we received
then or for some time to come. Since the bombardment and our wounding,
our nerves had fairly ached for the sedative which, good, bad or
indifferent, would steady the quivering harp strings of our nerves.
And a cigarette did that.

The headquarters staff appeared on the scene. They wanted information,
just as ours would have done under similar circumstances, but these
took a different method to acquire it. As before, in the trench, they
selected me for the spokesman. The senior officer, a general
apparently, addressed me: "How many troops are there in front of our
attack?"

I lied: "I don't know."

He shook a threatening finger at me. "I'll tell you this, my man: We
have a pretty good idea of how many troops lay behind you and if in
any particular you endeavour to lead us astray it will go very hard
with all of you. Now answer my question!" His English was good.

I cogitated. It would not do to tell him the terrible truth. That was
certain. So I took a chance. "Three divisions." He appeared to be
satisfied. The fact was, there were none behind us. We were utterly
without supporting troops.

"And Kitchener's Army? How many of them are there here?"

"Why, they haven't even come over yet, sir."

"Don't tell me that: I know better. They've been out here for months."

"But they haven't," I persisted. I told the truth this time.

"Yes," he shouted angrily.

"No," I flung back.

"Well, how many of them are there?"

The division yarn had gone down well. And perhaps I was slightly
heated. My spirit ran ahead of my judgment. "Five and a half to seven
million," I said.

He exploded. And called me everything but a soldier. I could not help
but reflect that I had overdone it a bit. And I certainly thought that
I was "for it" then and there.

To make matters worse he asked the others and they, profiting by my
mistake and following the lead of the first man questioned, put
Kitchener's army at four and a half million; which was only a trifle
of four million out. So I determined to be reasonable. When he came to
me again I confirmed the latter figure, explaining my earlier
statement by my lack of exact knowledge. And so that particular storm
blew over.

The general came back to me again. "You Canadians thought this was
going to be a picnic, didn't yo